Rachel is a 41-year-old doctor in Bergen County, New Jersey. She has a solid, loving marriage to a fellow MD, two boisterous kids under seven, and one method that she uses to stay sane:
Prestige porn.
Specifically, the kind of highbrow erotica with the same explicit content as a softcore video, but made by award-winning filmmakers and novelists, and starring Oscar-winning actors instead of OnlyFans girls.
“It’s become like my therapy,” said the family medicine specialist, who plays XXX-rated audiobooks like “Helpless” by Jessica Knoll and “A Court of Thorns and Roses” by Sarah J. Maas when she’s driving alone in her family SUV, and watches movies like “Baby Girl” and shows like “Industry” on her iPhone while doing laundry.
In another generation, Rachel would likely need to keep her sex-positive programming under wraps. Not today.
“My group chat is full of moms who trade [sex content] recommendations,” Rachel told The Post. “It feels like you’re watching any other good movie… just with bondage.”
Rachel and her friends are reaping the rewards of prestige porn, a new genre where 40+ women are centered in highbrow erotica about sexual dominance and desire — in movies, in books and at upscale fashion and beauty boutiques.
Think “Fifty Shades” for women who have a mortgage, a career and no patience for fake bags… or fake orgasms.
The era of prestige porn means Oscar winners like Nicole Kidman, 59, and Olivia Colman, 52, can engage in once-unthinkable graphic acts for au courant movie studios like A24.
Jessica Knoll, who has made millions writing crime thrillers, is now a Gen X Anais Nin writing about unspeakable — but delightfully readable — sex acts in her bestselling new book “Helpless.”
Meanwhile, Bloomingdale’s now sells $108 “arouse stimulating serum” alongside its Louis Vuitton purses; at Revolve, there are anal beads and Isabel Marant. And the $60 erotica app Quinn tells bedtime stories spicier than Blue Ribbon’s wasabi, read by Emmy nominee (and Dior darling) Andrew Scott.
The latest entry into these artful new films came this weekend: “Wicker,” an “absurdist romantic comedy” starring Colman as a frustrated spinster and Alexander Skarsgård as a man made of straw who gives her a roll in the hay.
When its steamy trailer debuted in July, it went so viral that doctors had to warn people against pleasuring themselves with “trees or shrubs.”
The movie opens nationwide on Oct. 30, but advance screenings for the show — including several with “vibrating and motion seats” — sold out across the country.
Reddit reports say the theaters are full of older women. In Florida’s Palm Beach Gardens, The Post saw an entire screening room full of female retirees.
“Very enjoyable,” said one 74-year-old woman named Joyce after the movie, under the condition that she withhold her last name. “My kids read your paper.”
Why is our era so ripe for prestige porn?
“People are totally disconnected from their bodies right now,” said Brianna Makówka, MSEd, LMHC, CST, a licensed sex therapist who specializes in kink therapy. She told The Post that between social media, dating apps and remote work, “we’re living in screens so often that our bodies are reminding us how important they are to our full being.”
Prestige porn, she argues, is letting us frame sex as not just desirable but luxurious, which gives people — especially women — permission to engage in it more openly.
“This new wave of luxury sex products and more artful erotic content is letting more people engage with sex, and pushing us to ask, ‘What is the type of sex worth having?’”
Putting kink in a luxury setting, she said, lets people explore sexual desire without stigma. “It’s giving a lot of people permission to get curious about asking, ‘What is it that I want from sex?’” she explained.
Theater director Rob Ashford thinks his new Off-Broadway show, “Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen,” is a hit because it depicts themes like sexual role play and bondage with “curiosity instead of judgement” — and with an eye toward the eerier effects of Ozempic
“We’re so obsessed with body control and weight. We have GLP1s. We have a doctor that can make anything bigger or smaller. But the corsets in our show, they give our characters this instant gratification, no shot, no scalpel. There’s a pleasure in that, especially for Gen X women who have been told their whole lives that their bodies are not enough.”
NYC designer Jennifer Zuccarini runs the upscale lingerie brand Fleur du Mal, which has designed peek-a-boo pieces for Taylor Swift and Zendaya. (She is also the creator of the viral $128 Knicks All-Star bra in blue satin and orange lace.)
Zuccarini says her three New York boutiques — in Nolita, the Upper East Side, and Williamsburg — are routinely “crowded” with older women coming directly from luxury stores like Chanel and Dior who are seeking “the same type of designer experience in the bedroom.”
“Sex is such a luxury right now because we’re on devices constantly,” she told The Post. “We’re disconnected. We say ‘touch grass’ but there’s also touching someone else. When you have that feeling with somebody, there’s no better drug out there.”
Zuccarini said it’s common for shoppers to visit her store asking for a simple bra or lace panty, but leave with a pair of $300 leather handcuffs. “Luxury helps legitimize sexual taste and preferences,” she explained.
Prestige porn even comes with its own luxury lube, as created by Éva Goicochea for her sexual wellness line Maude. Goicochea thinks that sex is “the final frontier” for adult women who have already conquered the boardroom, built dream wardrobes, and often had families — but not with total satisfaction in bed.
“Elevated design gives people permission to view sex as something they should feel good about wanting and exploring,” said Goicochea, who counts the Hollywood bombshell Dakota Johnson as a business partner.
Maude was one of Sephora’s first-ever sexual wellness brands; today it sells lube and vibrators at Ulta Beauty next to Naomi Watt’s sexual wellness line, Stripes, which was created especially for post-menopausal libidos.
Gwyneth Paltrow, 54, sells her own lubrication — called “Sex Oil” — through her Goop wellness empire for $55.
“Buying an intimate oil or a sex toy should be as mundane and shame-free as buying a face cream,” Goop’s editorial director, Kylie Gilbert, told The Post, adding that frank chats on sexual pleasure have been part of “Gwyneth’s vision of Goop from day one.” She notes that the Goop lube is a longtime bestseller.
Perhaps the big hook for prestige porn is that it refuses to call itself porn at all. In press interviews for “Wicker,” both Colman and Skarsgård are careful to call the movie a “romance” despite its explicit content.
“Industry” is described by HBO as a “gripping and provocative” drama despite its penchant for strap-ons and fellatio scenes. And the Nicole Kidman hit “Babygirl” features the Oscar winner on all fours, pretending to be a dog, licking candy out of her 20-something intern’s hand before getting thrashed in bed.
Makówka, the sex therapist, says all this is pretty great.
“A lot of people might have a curiosity of a power exchange dynamic —a dominant and submissive relationship that’s about leadership and surrender,” she said.
“Films like these are giving a lot of people permission to get curious about asking, ‘What is it that I want? What have I not been seeking? Maybe it’s okay to seek this out.’ That is healthier, psychologically, for everyone. It makes people happier and more connected.”
Tech devices don’t do that, says Makówka.
“Good sex does.”
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