MENOPAUSE MARKETING?

Clamouring to cash in on the menopause misery ‘trend’. Kerry Potter gets hot under the collar

at work or at the gym, where they’ve talked openly about their menopause symptoms. Brain fog is the one that comes up most – usually in the context of someone losing the thread of the conversation. Similarly, I interview a lot of female celebrities in this age bracket; a few years ago, they would be as likely to bring up menopause as they would admit that their youthful looks owed more to Botox than drinking lots of water and getting enough sleep. Now, it’s often impossible to stop them banging on about it.

Although this all may seem mystifying to older women who wouldn’t dream of discussing what they’d coyly refer to as

The Change at a dinner party, to my (perimenopausal) generation, the new approach is seen as progress. After all, when it comes to busting taboos, it is good to talk. How odd it seems now that until recently there was an omertà about something 50 per cent of people go through.

But with every societal shift comes a business opportunity, and the circling marketeers have gone in for the kill. A once welcome conversation now feels like one that never ends – menopause is the equivalent of the drunken party bore who corners you in the host’s kitchen at 2am, while you nod politely and pray your taxi will arrive soon.

Women do, of course, need solutions to menopause issues; not everyone can or wants to take HRT and a few of these products clearly do the job for some people. But only if you have the cash to flash. And let’s not forget that some of said issues might be best tackled with societywide structural and mindset change rather than a tea bag. For instance, what might be helpful is more empathy and flexibility in the workplace for women who are struggling with menopause, alongside, as is so often the case, juggling exhausting caring responsibilities for both the younger and older generations of their families.

‘The objective was for menopause to become part of everyday conversation, to be accepted as just another life stage for half the population,’ says Baker. ‘But far from being genuinely accepted and destigmatised, it’s been turned into just another shopping opportunity.’

It’s the ‘meno-washing’ that particularly grates. When is a facial spritz not a facial spritz? When it’s a menopause cooling facial spritz, of course! Serena Williams, who founded a venture capital fund in 2017 to invest in female-led start-ups, has referred to menopause as ‘a trend’, while Paltrow has talked about her plans for ‘rebranding’ it. It’s easy to laugh at the latter – and many do – but she’s laughing even louder, all the way to the bank, as Goop is now worth a quarter of a billion dollars.

‘We want to be heard, listened to, seen. Instead, we get patronised, shafted and fleeced,’ says Baker. But still we keep on lapping up this stuff – quite literally, as Waitrose reports sales of what it quaintly calls ‘women’s wellbeing teas’ are up by nearly 50 per cent in the past year. The supermarket also notes that online searches for ‘healthy menopause diet’ have jumped so it feels like only a matter of time before the menopause-friendly microwavable ready meal arrives, to be wolfed down on the sofa in your

Penneys meno PJs.

Something tells me Paltrow won’t be so on board with that one.