How the 19 Billion Dollar Menopause Industry Exploits Women

Why aren't we free to be ourselves as we age?

I’m not a natural beauty. This is the story I’ve been telling myself my whole life …” you ain’t a beauty but hey you’re alright, and that’s alright with me, so Mary climb in …”

I did climb in. All the way in. I decided I wasn’t a beauty and I made it alright. I said it out loud. Often. To myself. To others. I had to let the rest of the world know, I knew. If I acknowledged it first, they wouldn’t have to whisper about it behind my back.

I shared this self awareness with a man I had a crush on once. He said, “it’s funny how well you know yourself.” He dated me anyway, I could practically hear him singing …“and that’s all right with me ...”

Hey world I know beauty is important. I know the rules. I understand I failed at it, but if I’m okay with it, you should be too. Didn’t you hear me? Stop applying pressure. Everywhere. All the time.

I’m not unattractive. I’m 5'7 and blessed with a small, curvy frame. I have my dad’s brown Italian eyes. A forehead that requires bangs and fine hair that isn’t straight or curly.

Being “beautiful” for me is a lot of work. It takes effort. A relentless, unforgiving striving to “get ready”, get it right.

My friends were prettier than me. Blonde hair, any other color of eyes but brown. I hate my brown eyes I would say. I know that blue and green are prettier. You’re so lucky. It’s okay, really, I don’t mind.

Writing about it now, the pain I caused myself, guts me. What my life could have been if the thousands of hours spent “getting ready” were actually lived instead.

We spend time getting ready to be accepted. We won’t step outside the door as ourselves. That would be admitting defeat to the world and we aren’t losers. We’re up for the game of meeting society’s expectations.

Dinner, sure, drinks sure, let me get ready first. That should take exactly an hour. More if I don’t “come out right”. More if I stick my head under the faucet because I hate how my hair came out the first time.

At 56, I still wrestle with the habitual routine of presenting myself to the world. A world that continues to define beauty for me. Menopausal women are its newest target.

Sometimes I think we were better off 20 years ago. When the world discarded us, told us beauty was over, and let us accept it and finally live our lives. Grey hair, saggy skin, forgetful, but knowledgeable in all the best ways.

Travel unbothered by gazes. Drinking, eating and dancing unseen. Beasts finally let loose from the puppet strings and the masters.

But they have found us, stood up, took notice and told us we can still have beauty. Exploited the transition, the sorrow, loss, acceptance and freedom of it all. Now they get to decide what empowerment and grace look like too.

The 19 billion dollar menopause industry tells us 56 isn’t supposed to look like it does. Just like the beauty industry told us our entire lives we weren’t supposed to look like we did.

If I had to guess, I bought into this vision long ago. When they first taught me I had to do beauty right. And now, I have to do aging right. It’s not allowed to be what it actually is. Longing, accepting … reaching, staying … red lipstick, ChapStick … heels, flats.

I imagine myself as a 56 year old with tight yoga arms. Long whimsical hair. A messy up-do full of ringlets with pretty silver streaks. A sundress hanging off my bronzed shoulders.

My decollage wrinkle free because either one, I’m not actually Irish, or two, Marty McFly flew his DeLorean back to 1985 and ran out of it screaming at me ... “Don’t cover yourself with baby oil at the beach!”

I go on imagining her …

Peaceful and calm in a field full of flowers. Fire pit in the backyard on the private beach I now call home. Good red wine flows. Good friends. Job well done. Life well Lived. It’s our time now. She saved money, aged beautifully.

Skin perfectly wrinkled. Just like an Oil of Olay ad …“It’s okay to be you, you’ve earned it and you can still glow.” 

The truth is a lot harsher. I burnt my skin off with baby oil. Marty McFly didn’t save me. The plastic surgeon at Cornell did. After she cut holes in my face to remove the skin cancer and then stitched me up with minimal scarring. I have scars. I don’t glow.

I don’t have silver ringlets in my hair. I have thinned out hair that was never any good to begin with. My anti-aging is a solid F you in the mirror. I don’t buy good red wine. I never saved a dime. I buy boxed wine and hope it lasts two weeks.

I’m not the woman in the Volvo ad flying down the California coast holding hands with the salt and pepper haired love of my life. He is not sporting a Rolex. We are not on our way to our retirement house.

I stand squarely in my rental, still fighting with my newly long thinning hair hoping silver ringlets will spring out of it somewhere. Anywhere. I still dye it. I have decidedly not done it all well.

My menopause doesn’t look like Nicole Kidman’s or J lo’s. It looks fleshy and dumpy. I have not yet accepted it. I’m working on it. I still reach for the past.

So this is midlife for most of us. We are slightly lost, a little lonely and hot. Not on the outside but from the inside out. Most days I don’t find any of this very empowering. I find it exhausting.

Why is our suffering a billion dollar market called aging positively?

Can we admit it’s not a glass of Prosecco in a power suit standing at a conference claiming to empower us while selling us their side of the story?

Sure. The power suit and the Prosecco might be nice. Sometimes. I can applaud it. Occasionally.

But more often than not I trust my own voice. I have grown. I have fixed broken many times over the span of my life. And now another cycle is here. I’m losing things. Things don’t look the same. I’m not the same. Am I allowed to admit that?

Not everyone’s running around embracing something. We are figuring it out. Slowly. What it means for each of us. It’s personal. In the moments I do age positively it looks more like this …

I close the Instagram page. I don’t look up how old Laura Dern is after staring at her toned arms as she laughs with her best friend Reese sharing cocktails. I don’t look in the mirror and curse myself. I go kayaking instead and forget what I look like but remember who I am.

And when I make my girlfriend laugh, who is suffering madly with early onset dementia, that indeed is a good day.

I am aging positively because I rely on the wisdom I have gained over the years. I survived things. I messed things up, a lot of things. All of that has led me to a better way to be. I can take myself through this as well.

I don’t have the dollars to age positively. I’m not here to make those who decide, decidedly richer. I’m just me, and most days that’s a hell of a good thing to be.