It’s official: sex is back—louder, bolder, and more unhinged than ever. After a decade of performative wokeness, digital puritanism, and algorithm-friendly desirability politics, culture is swinging back toward something darker, stranger, and unapologetically deviant. The soft-focus sensuality of the early 2010s has been replaced by a delirious, grotesque, and deeply hedonistic thirst—one that thrives on excess, obsession, and pushing boundaries.
Look around: Halina Reijn’s Babygirl explores submission and power in a world where boundaries dissolve into desire. Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, a gothic fever dream, oozes with forbidden temptation. In music, FKA twigs’ EUSEXUAturns eroticism into high art, blurring the line between bodily pleasure and transcendence. Ethel Cain’s Perverts leans into the Southern Gothic of sin and salvation, making lust feel like a holy experience. These are not subtle expressions of sexuality; they are raw, extreme, and demanding.
This isn’t just a trend—it’s a pendulum swing. After years of cultural repression, we are witnessing a collective rupture, a return to sex not just as an act, but as a defiant, chaotic, and often unsettling force. It’s no longer about safe eroticism but about surrender, obsession, and the sheer intensity of the flesh. Pleasure is no longer just desired—it’s devoured.
Even pop culture’s depiction of sex has evolved from the aestheticized intimacy of Euphoria to something much messier, more primal. TV and film are embracing the grotesque, the extreme, and the perverse. Desire is no longer polished and palatable—it’s animalistic, complicated, and dangerously fun.
So why now? Maybe it’s a reaction to years of digital surveillance, self-censorship, and the over-intellectualization of attraction. Maybe it’s a backlash against the commodification of sex, where OnlyFans has turned intimacy into transaction. Maybe it’s just the natural cycle of repression and explosion, a historical inevitability that follows every attempt to tame human nature.
Whatever the reason, one thing is clear: everyone is horny now. And for the first time in a long time, mainstream culture is embracing it—fully, unapologetically, and without restraint.
Photographer Tijana Vukovic @_tijanavukovic_
Creative Direction @alekandsteph / Stylist @sky_is_dlimit
Grooming Michael Janda @michaeljanda
Production @BELLOmediaGroup x @MaisonPriveePR_LA
