HOURHow was your Menopause Awareness Day 2025? Have you slipped out of your meno pajamas and sipped your meno tea with a slice of homemade flaxseed bread and a side of meno chocolate? Have you rushed to the gym to lift weights and then to a Pilates class to stay healthy forever? Do you remember your MHT (menopausal hormone therapy is a commonly used term for HRT) tablet, patch, gel, pessary, suppository or cream, trusting your therapist or private clinic to prescribe for you and only you, grateful that finally medications have changed your situation? Or have you thought, “How do I know what’s right for me?”
If you're wondering who you can trust, you're not alone. IN Australian study In a paper published earlier this month, more than 500 women aged 45-64 noted “significant skepticism” about the pharmaceutical industry's motives, as well as genuine concerns about who can be trusted and who is after their money at a vulnerable time in their lives. Researchers now warn that women are being exploited “inmenopause, gold rush“
My own menopause was terrible. If you think hot flashes are bad (and they are), try 40 an hour in your 30s while going through chemo, then radiation, then failed IVF, all while none of your friends understand what you're going through. This was over 20 years ago, when discussions about the menopause were virtually non-existent – and while we can all be glad that things have changed over the last decade, the way menopause is now marketed should be cause for concern for anyone approaching menopause.
Because here's the thing: menopause is a period of transition. Menopause is a transition, just like puberty, pregnancy, parenthood and coping with infertility. Yes, it takes time – even now, at 62, I still get hot flashes very occasionally, usually if I've eaten too much sugar or am dealing with something very emotional, but I know it will pass. I know what it is occurs physiologically, and knowing what is happening internally is critical. (I'm not sure menopause toast would work, no matter how much flaxseed it contains.)
Having been postmenopausal for so long, I became interested in how much of the focus and marketing was on the transition itself. I've been researching postmenopause for the past five years, usually in the late 50s and 60s, when the harder physical and emotional stages of the transition are largely behind us for many of us and we're moving into the vital third act. My diverse group of interviewees found a growing awareness of how meno-marketing preys on ageists, misogynists and pronatalist culture in which most of us were raised.
The ageism of our culture tells us that old women are invisible, that maintaining attractiveness should be our priority, and we lose all value when we lose fertility. This triple whammy is especially painful—and lucrative for marketers—because it plays on our inner fears. After a lifetime of being taught to value the male gaze and to believe that being a “real” woman depends on our fertility – and that to maintain both of these qualities we must remain young and beautiful – well, of course, when we get old, it stings. Unlike other signs of aging, many elements of the menopause transition cannot be disguised with hair dye, makeup, or clever clothing placement. Hot flushes may be beneficial for Highland Maya, Guatemala women for whom menopause means an increase in social status and some of whom call hot flashes a lift in their animal spirit, but for many of us it can be very problematic. We hide our tampons in pretty floral cases and wear pads to protect others from seeing leaking breast milk, but sweating in public can be both physically uncomfortable and (often more painful, given our social preference for women to pretend to be men in the workplace) an acknowledgment of the inability to have complete control over our bodies.
This fear and anxiety then develops into a struggle during menopause, where instead of the MHT and non-MGT camps working together to support us through the transition, they are pitted against each other, as if only MHT will help or only herbal supplements and weight lifting are the right way to go. This creates a real struggle for each of us to find our place somewhere in the middle.
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Although research into menopause is often controversial, the only thing large global studies tell us is that There is no universal menopause and each individual experience is unique and deeply influenced by lifestyle, family, sociocultural factors and relationships. In some studies, women report less negative physical symptoms menopause, when they live in a society that values older women.
Given the market's passion for menopause, I'm particularly interested in what will happen when the companies trying to sell us things realize that most of us will be postmenopausal for about a third of our lives – or maybe the market will become too ageist, misogynistic and pronatalist to chase our pennies then. We can only hope.
And just so you know, while all of my study participants spoke of the physiological and emotional challenges of the transition once they emerged on the other side—even despite workplace discrimination and demands for care from their loved ones—they also all described postmenopause as a time of thriving and growth. We're not done yet.
