Meika Hollender, co-founder of Sustain
Courtesy of Sustain
When Meika Hollender first launched Sustain six years ago, she had a very specific goal in mind for the sexual and reproductive wellness brand. As if creating the world’s healthiest and most sustainable condom and focusing on the oft-ignored female consumer weren’t enough, she wanted to completely transform the way we approach sexuality. As the company has grown, conquering the condom space and expanding to period care and other product categories, Sustain has tackled a number of issues, including the pleasure gap, access to safe and affordable birth control, and the destigmatization of women’s sexuality. But Hollender always found herself wishing there were one cause the brand could pioneer that would address all of these issues collectively rather than piecemeal—and last year, she finally found it.
In all of the research she’d conducted and customer interactions she’d had since founding Sustain, Hollender was encountering the same surprising and ultimately depressing statistics: 29 states are required to stress abstinence in their sex education, only 12 states require any discussion of sexual orientation, and just five states are required to include consent in their curriculums. She already knew that the U.S. had a higher occurrence of unplanned pregnancies than any other developed country, with more than one million annually, that there are an estimated 20 million new STD infections each year, and that 81% of women and 90% of LGBTQIA+ youth had experienced sexual harassment, and she couldn’t help but think these figures were all inextricably linked.
“What I realized was that comprehensive sex education—advocating for it and building and redefining what it could look like in this country—could actually take this all on systemically,” Hollender says. She immediately started engaging the Sustain community on the subject, getting educators and medical experts involved and producing content that highlighted the disappointing statistics around sex ed in the U.S. “I was so blown away by the straightforward health information that people didn’t have have access to or an accurate education on,” she recalls. “And they were coming to us, a business, to learn it, which was awesome but also just revealed the need for better sex education.”
Courtesy of Sustain
In the midst of all this, Sustain was acquired by natural products retailer Grove Collaborative, and by staying on as the brand’s president, Hollender was now able to devote all of her energy to the cause. “Sex education quickly became the big issue that we’d be taking on going forward and doing a lot of advocacy around,” she notes. “And I’m very excited because I truly believe it can move the needle on a lot of this other stuff.”
The initial content Sustain ran was very well received, but Hollender felt it was time for something bigger, and she knew a thorough but short and digestible video campaign would be just the thing. “I think there’s no better way to engage communities and larger audiences in these types of conversations than to hear firsthand from individuals about their personal stories and to do it in a way that’s not super serious and straightforward,” she says. “So, my vision was to have people from all over with totally different backgrounds sharing what they wish they had learned in sex ed.”
Sustain enlisted the help of Tiffany Haddish, Chrissy Rutherford, Alok Menon, Dr. Jennifer Lincoln, and 16 others to share their experiences with sex ed and highlight the system’s shortcomings. “Those are the types of voices we wanted in the room because it’s not just about one person’s experience,” Hollender explains. “We really engaged with the people who were passionate about what we were working on—and honestly, a lot of people end up being passionate about the stuff that Sustain works on because everybody has some sort of personal experience when it comes to sex ed or reproductive health.”
The result is a two-minute-long video, which asks participants what they wish they had learned in their sex ed classrooms, and answers range from “the normal functions of the vagina” and “the spectrums of gender and sexuality” to Haddish’s “queefing’s not bad.” “I think the amazing thing, which was not at all unexpected, was that no one we talked to said, ‘I totally got educated,’” Hollender says. “Everyone was sort of like, ‘Oh god, I didn’t learn anything.’”
Sustain’s campaign launched this week and has already been met with a great response from its online community, but Hollender knows the video is just the first step in what will be a much longer path to fixing sex ed in America. “Everyone is in the same situation, where they didn’t and probably still don’t have all the information they need or all their questions around this stuff answered,” she says. “So, the first step is just starting that conversation, and I hope that by sharing this video, people start talking about this issue and sharing their own experiences.”
The campaign not only showcases what these familiar faces believe are the failings of the current system, but it also asks viewers to join in with their own thoughts and stories. For every share of the video, Sustain will donate $1 to Advocates for Youth, up to $15,000, in addition to the $25,000 the brand has already contributed. “They’re an amazing organization that provides comprehensive sex education at a peer-to-peer level,” Hollender says. “And I think that can be an incredibly effective way of moving things forward when it comes to getting more access to sex ed.”
The final step, the founder believes, is to take action. “I think what’s really cool about doing this right now is that people are getting very familiar with speaking up, signing petitions, and raising money for different issues in a way that I have not seen people engage in my lifetime,” she notes. In tandem with this campaign, Sustain launched sexpectmore.com, where users can learn more about and take action on bills that are fighting for comprehensive sex ed, at both the federal and state levels.
The company also plans to roll out a digital sex ed curriculum of its own later this year, taking into account the feedback it receives from the video. “There’s such a lack of funding of sex ed programs in the U.S. that we can’t even begin to implement the types of programming we need,” says Hollender. “I think things really need to be stripped down and rebuilt, so in the meantime, when there isn’t the funding at the federal or state level and we still have these outdated and unrealistic policies in place, we have to develop new ways of getting this information and education out, outside of the school system.”
In many ways, it may seem like a hectic time to launch such an extensive campaign, but Hollender believes the craziness of 2020 is actually what will bring the fight for better sex ed to the next level. “We’re seeing how unprepared and how scary and dangerous things can be when our country is not set up to deal with public health, and racial inequality is so exacerbated when it comes to the healthcare industry and especially reproductive healthcare,” she says. “So, in some ways it’s like why now? Don’t we have enough going on? But all of this stuff is interconnected, and people are home and engaging online like never before, so I think it’s a really good time to start this conversation.”
Of course, at the end of the day, Sustain is a business, and there is a business component to all of this, but Hollender firmly believes the important thing is to make a noticeable, positive impact on the world. “That’s what really has always gotten me out of bed every morning,” she says. “It’s about the work and advocacy, and I think the more women and men who are out there having conversations about sex, pleasure, consent, STDs, and all of that, the better Sustain will do.”
