What Menopause Marketers Won’t Tell You: Aging Should Be Celebrated | Stella Duffy
HHow was your Menopause Awareness Day 2025? Wearing your Minno pajamas, sipping your Minno tea with a slice of homemade flaxseed bread and a side order of Minno chocolate? Have you rushed to the gym to lift weights and then to Pilates classes to stay healthy forever? Do you remember the MHT pill, patch, gel, suppository or cream (menopausal hormone therapy – the now widely accepted term) or do you trust your GP or private clinic to prescribe it just for you, and are grateful that the medication has made a difference to you? Or have you thought: “How the hell do I know what’s right for me?”
If you’re wondering who you can trust, you’re not alone. in Australian study Earlier this month, more than 500 women aged between 45 and 64 cited “significant doubts” about the pharmaceutical industry’s motives, along with real concern about who they should trust and who is out to get their money at a vulnerable time in their lives. Now researchers are warning that women are being exploited in a ‘menopausal gold rush’.
My menopause was horrific. If you think hot flashes are bad (and they are), try 40 hours in your 30s while going through chemotherapy, then radiotherapy, then failed IVF, all the while without any of your colleagues understanding what you’re going through. This was more than twenty years ago, when discussion of menopause was almost non-existent – and although we can all be glad that things have changed in the past decade, the way menopause is now being promoted should raise concerns for anyone approaching menopause.
Because here’s the thing: menopause is a transitional phase. Just as puberty, pregnancy, parenthood, and coping with infertility are transitions, so is menopause. Yes, it takes time – even now, at 62, I still get hot flashes sometimes, usually if I’ve eaten too much sugar or am dealing with something very emotional, but I know they will pass. I know what it is It happens physiologically, and knowing what’s going on internally makes a big difference. (I’m not convinced that post-menopausal toast can be, no matter how much flaxseed it contains.)
Long after menopause, I became interested in how to focus and market on the transition itself. I’ve spent the past five years researching the post-menopausal phase, typically in the late 50s and 60s, when the tougher physical and emotional parts of the transition are largely over for many of us and we move into the vital third trimester. What emerged from my diverse group of interviewees was a growing awareness of how marketing preys on the ageism, misogyny, and reproductive culture in which most of us grew up.
Ageism in our culture tells us that older women are invisible, that is Maintaining attractiveness should be our priority and we lose all value when we lose fertility. This triple whammy is particularly painful – and lucrative for marketers – because it plays on our inner fears. After a lifetime of being trained to value the male gaze and to believe that being a “real” woman depends on our fertility – and that in order to maintain both of these things we must remain young and beautiful – well, of course that hurts as we get older. Unlike other signs of aging, many elements of menopause cannot be hidden by hair dye, makeup, or clever clothing arrangement. A hot, sweaty flow might be good Guatemalan Mayan highlands Women, for whom menopause means a rise in social status, some call hot flashes a rise in their animal spirit, but for many of us it can be a big deal. We hide our tampons in pretty flowery boxes and wear pads to protect others from seeing our leaking breast milk, but sweating in public can be physically uncomfortable — and often even more painful given our societal preference for women to pretend to be men in the workplace — recognizing the impossibility of having complete control over our bodies.
This fear and anxiety then fuels menopause infighting, where, instead of the MHT and non-MHT camps working together to support us through the transition, they fight against each other as if only MHT will help, or that only herbal supplements and weight lifting are the right way to go. Which creates a real struggle for each of us to find somewhere in the middle.
After promoting the newsletter
While menopause research is often contradictory, one thing large global studies tell us is this There is no universal menopause Each individual experience is different, and depends greatly on lifestyle, family, social, cultural and attitudinal factors. In some studies, women reported fewer Negative physical symptoms of menopause when they live in a society that values older women.
Given the market’s passionate association with menopause, I’m particularly interested in what happens when companies trying to sell us things realize that most of us will still be postmenopausal for about a third of our lives — or perhaps the market will be too ageist, misogynistic, and pro-natalist to seek our reward then. We can only hope.
And FYI: While everyone in my research talked about the physiological and emotional difficulties of transition, once they came out the other side—even while dealing with workplace discrimination and the care demands of loved ones—they all also described postmenopause as a time of thriving and growing. We’re not done yet.