The Pause That Refreshes
Lady celebs of a certain age are doing the (menopause) hustle.
Unlike every website you’ve ever visited, no one sends you an ‘Our Updated Terms of Use’ email when menopause—or its ‘early is on time, on time is late’ cousin perimenopause—is headed your way. I’m still not “in” it, but as the old song goes, she’ll be coming ‘round the mountain when she comes (when she comes)….
My regular gynecologist never mentioned The Big M, even though my age bracket should have tipped her off. But when she called out sick one day, her replacement asked if I had any questions about what to expect, Big M-wise, in the future and, well, yes. Ten minutes later she’d blown the lid off my brain.
And an hour later, I traumatized—sorry, educated—an earnest and scruffy male colleague with big ears by pulling up an exercise ball chair in the middle of the office and telling my then boss, also strengthening her core on chairs that made us look like we were hatching giant baby chicks, everything no one had ever told us about The Change.
My boss, seven years younger, was in the thick of menopause and her doctors had not mentioned half of what I relayed from a doctor I’d just met. (Fun fact: It’s a reflection of what most doctors are taught in medical school about it, which is :::crickets:::) We. Were. Stunned. And so relieved. It was like a substitute teacher showing you how to do quadratic equations when your regular math teacher just queued up select clips from Good Will Hunting and napped after giving you an open book exam.
So yeah, today you can stroll into a bookstore, real or virtual, and pick up books like Dr. Jen Gunter’s (most excellent, deeply researched, and casually hilarious) The Menopause Manifesto, Darcey Steinke’s bracing Flash Count Diary: Menopause and The Vindication of Natural Life, and Heather Corrina’s melodramatically titled What Fresh Hell Is This? Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, and You.
Then again, that’s only been true for about five minutes. M—menopause, not the MI6 intelligence agency head who’s been bossing James Bond around for decades—has been filed under S for “Shhhh!” for centuries. Adult coloring books on the other hand….
It’s still the later in life shove that dare not speak its name is what I’m saying. But a few female celebrities are racing into the void to help (?) women and people who menstruate navigate a life norm that has even doctors shaking their heads and murmuring, “I don’t know her,” Mariah Carey style.
Celebrities like….
…Oprah Winfrey, who as noted recently by NBC’s Today Show, joined her pal, journalist Maria Shriver, to speak about women’s health for the Paramount+ series The Checkup with Dr. David Agus. I will not be watching because I refuse to subscribe to another streaming service, not even to listen to Winfrey both “normalize menopause” and explain why it’s something to look forward to while expanding upon this banger:
Winfrey explained that her desire to learn more and destigmatize the experience of menopause began when she realized that a lack of knowledge had put her through near hell.
“I have journals filled with ‘I don’t know if I’ll make it until the morning,’” she shared. “I thought I was going to die every night.”
Around the time that she experienced menopause, Winfrey explained that she began to feel listless and unable to focus long enough to read, a symptom that Winfrey says caused her to end Oprah’s Book Club.** She also started to have extreme heart palpitations.
** Oh my GAWD!
Gwyneth ‘GOOP’ Paltrow appears repeatedly in Amy Larocca’s December 20, 2022 The New York Times feature article Welcome to the Menopause Gold Rush, which made me laugh right up top. Gwyneth doing her best Goldfinger impression didn’t do it, but this line did:
Menopause has historically been treated as a way of saying not dead, exactly, but part dead for sure.
It’s funny because it’s true.
Larocca continued:
We’re in the middle of a menopause gold rush. The market is flooding with high-profile, well-funded menopause-related beauty products and telemedicine start-ups, as well as a growing roster of celebrities willing to admit it’s happening to them. There’s the potential not only for a big cultural shift to happen, but for some number of people to profit off it.
Some of those edu-taining profiteers include Gwyneth Paltrow; Cameron Diaz; Drew Barrymore; Abby Wambach; and Glennon Doyle, all of whom are bold face name investors in Evernow, a :::checks notes::: menopause telemedicine company.
Gwyneth had, of course, also dipped her toe into the menopause market a few years back via her much mocked (and successful) lifestyle brand GOOP:
In 2018, Ms. Paltrow announced that she was ready to talk about menopause; and also, by the way, she was releasing a vitamin pack called “Madame Ovary” for women whose time had come.
And actress Namoi Watts really went for it:
The entries here include Stripes, a line of “scalp to vag” beauty products for the menopausal woman (stripes, as in, she’s really earned hers) created by the actress Naomi Watts, 54. Stripes sells “Vag of Honor” revitalizing gel and a facial moisturizer called “The Drench Revolution.”
Good luck getting the phrase “scalp to vag” out of your head. “But “vag of honor” can stay because I am a whore for cheeky puns.
Speaking of stripes, last Thanksgiving The Cut’s Rebranding Midlife, aka in Google Search as How Menopause Is Turning Celebrities Into CEOs—y’all, SHE-EOs was right there!—shouted out my fave celebrity menopause side hustler Stacy London, former What Not to Wear icon and State of Menopause CEO. (Oh look, she’s hosting a The Future of Menopause event two hours after this email goes out because :::synergy:::.) She’s doing great—well, earnest—things in the menopause-wellness industrial complex space, alongside newly retired tennis G.O.A.T. Serena Williams and actress Judy Greer. Williams’ venture capital firm is a proud investor in Greer’s Wile, “a plant-based supplement brand that offers powders and tinctures to ease perimenopause and menopause symptoms you can now find in Whole Foods.”
And to all of this I say…thanks, I guess? Normalize the hell out of it, ladies!
But maybe I don’t need a major life change that directly impacts more than half the population to be monetized quite so eagerly. It’s giving “there’s an app for that” and “Humphrey Bogart wore khakis,” when really I just need actual medical professionals and un-famous faces less likely to attract venture capital and brand deals to learn more about it and then shout it from the rooftops.
What about, you know, education? Well, I’m a sucker for a good conference, but Naomi Watts’ inaugural menopause symposium, New Pause, and, to a lesser degree, London’s CEO Menopause Summit, felt exhausting, a less pink version of the completely on the feminist empowerment conference nose WAHAM episode of Shrill. Menopause doesn’t make me cringe, but these celebs racing into the void with tinctures and such sure does.
Last weekend, a male friend who’d asked me what the next Celebrity Side Hustlers would be about wondered aloud if talking about '“The Change”—he’s older than I am—wasn’t just something mothers, grandmothers, and aunties passed down matter-of-factly, like a Royal Dansk Danish Butter Cookie tin that doubles as a sewing kit.
Honey, no. My lady friends will back me up on this one, but they barely talked about menstruation. Back in my day an adult hand just opened a girl’s bedroom door, tossed in a box of maxi pads and a copy of Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret**, and called it a day.
Gwyneth wouldn’t approve, if only because they’re not her target market. (Yet.) It’s hard to sell $98 Art Deco vibrators, $45 Rose Quartz Soothing Face-Massage Rollers, and $90 Why Am I So Effing Tired? dietary supplements to menstruating teenage girls, thank goodness. At least until TikTok gets involved.
** P.S., last week I learned that Judy Blume’s puberty and periods classic has been made into a movie. Please respect my privacy at this difficult time.