The CHANGE
Skincare brands are no longer framing menopause like it’s the death of womanhood.
THE IDEA FOR her skincare line, Pause, came to Rochelle Weitzner in a flash—a hot flash. When the long-time beauty exec (she’s the former CEO of Erno Laszlo and CFO of Laura Mercier Cosmetics and RéVive Skincare) encountered a sudden burst of warmth while driving to the beach, she panicked for a moment. But then inspiration hit. “I realized there wasn’t anyone out there speaking frankly to women like me who are experiencing the skin changes related to menopause,” she says. “I got to the beach and started writing the business plan.”
Of course, there have always been beauty lines for mature skin, almost always marketed in coy ways (“What, you? Old? STOP it!”), but a new wave of skincare and wellness products has stopped whispering “menopause” like it’s a swear word. In pop culture, that moment in every woman’s life when periods end forever is being rebranded not as some hideous, embarrassing death of femininity but as an inevitable phase that, frankly, isn’t all bad news. Gwyneth Paltrow has spoken openly about being in perimenopause. Shows like Better Things and Grace and Frankie certainly aren’t shy about the M-word. In the much-discussed Last Fuckable Day skit from Inside Amy Schumer,
Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Patricia Arquette invite poor, hapless thirtysomething Amy to a celebration of then 56-year-old Louis-Dreyfus’ last fuckable day. “I’m thrilled!” says Louis-Dreyfus. “Ecstatic. It’s a godsend.” But the most recent aging and menopause opus was delivered by Kristin Scott Thomas playing a 58-year-old character named Belinda in season two of Fleabag. “The fucking menopause comes and it is the most wonderful fucking thing in the world,” she promises. “Yes, your entire pelvic floor crumbles and you get fucking hot and no one cares, but then you’re free.”
Beauty brands are getting the meno memo that while there’s no escaping the fact that the symptoms of menopause are real—a decline in estrogen levels means less collagen, which results in skin becoming thinner, drier and less bouncy—they shouldn’t be treated like a dirty secret either. “I hate the phrase ‘anti-aging,’” says Weitzner, whose line includes a hot-flash cooling mist. It’s “well-aging” for Pause, thank you very much, which also hosts a menopause-centred blog called Connect the Dots on its website. Kindra (which will be available in Canada soon) is a comprehensive menopause wellness brand that sells creams, supplements and a vaginal moisturizer all on a cheeky site full of shame-free content about “the change.” Emepelle, a perimenopause- and menopause-specific skincare line that launched last year, is shouting from the rooftops about how it treats estrogen-deficient skin with a recently discovered promising compound called MEP (methyl estradiolpropanoate) that stimulates the estrogen-receptor pathways in the skin. Even a big brand like Vichy has launched No Pause at Menopause, a magazine-style site that, yes, promotes its age-specific Neovadiol line—its latest product, a neck and face contour cream called Phytosculpt, launched in February—but is also full of articles about how women can navigate this final hormonal frontier in all aspects of their lives.
As we’re all eventually going to come face to face with this phase, we can take some comfort from this exchange between Fleabag and Belinda during her now famous menopause speech. “I was told it was horrendous,” says the 33-year-old. “It is horrendous,” Belinda admits. “But then it’s magnificent.”