I have a little mustache. I didn’t care, or even really know, until the 7th grade boys pointed it out. Middle school is, notoriously, a deep ring of hell from which none of us return unscathed. It was there that I learned about shaving, bleaching, and waxing to appease the tween critics. The great, hungry maw of the beauty industrial complex (BIC) was waiting for me, magazines and products in hand.
None of it worked, of course. My clumsy attempts to change my face were sussed out immediately by the nasty little sleuths, setting me up for more ridicule. There was a part of me that knew it was all bullshit. I’m brilliant and beautiful, can’t they see? But that part was ground down, pressed ever deeper until it was a hard little kernel in the center of my being.
I was a bookish kid growing up in the 60’s and 70’s. I wanted to be smart. Intellectual. Savvy. I’m not sure that I ever achieved any of those things, but to me they were the foundation of something that might be called beauty.
Strong + smart + kind = beautiful.
The odd calculus of my fevered teen dreams.
I also secretly wanted to be beautiful in the way of those long-limbed, long-haired forever teen nymphs that 1970s culture pushed in my face. I wanted to hate those images, recognizing the objectification and the homogenization of aesthetics. But I looked hard at them and yearned for a dose of that thing called beauty. To be female in this world is to be buried under impossible standards. We are all, girls in our youth, eventually forced to kneel and make offerings to the cruel and greedy gods of beauty. And so the mustache had to go.
Seventeen magazine was my beauty bible, and I was a willing teen consumer of products and aspirations. Smells and shapes, hair and face, we were given maps to all of it, none of it achievable. There was always one girl in high school who looked as if she effortlessly stepped out of the magazine pages (what happened to her?), but the rest of us lumbered along in ill-fitting clothes with our curious odors, pocked faces, and little mustaches. Individuality was frowned upon. We were a bunch of misguided Farrah wannabes in my tribe. I was 12 years old when that poster went up on everyone’s wall. I felt all kinds of fucked up by my blossoming body, and the messages about it pasted everywhere.
captures perfectly the media artillery aimed at young girls in her essay, “I Want You to Lick Me.”“Magazines helped me become more palatable. You can shop your way to womanhood, they said, and gave me the grocery list.”
Fast forward to middle age. I nurtured that buried kernel for years and it flourished. Outside the halls of American schools, beyond the confines of beauty magazines, I discovered my strength and radiance. I’m comfortable in my skin, with my signature mustache, and recognize the beauty in my uniqueness. It’s true what they say about giving less fucks. We may pay for it with hot flashes and joint pain (rage and madness, etc.), but it’s a delicious development.
Right on cue, however, here comes the commodification of menopause. It may seem designed to make us feel better, but it’s ultimately about aspiring to impossible aesthetics and the bottom line. “Menopause solutions from scalp to vag,” promises one brand. The scalp and vag are not where the trouble lies, unless we’re building dolls. They will make dollars on the backs of our suffering, whether it’s bleach for a badgered 7th grader, douche for the early sex years, diets for the baby chapter, or potions, serums, and miracle pills for the inevitable aging.
A telling quote from that piece in The Cut:
“Gen X is not interested in being middle-aged,” London tells me. “We have Botox, we have fillers, we go to the gym, we walk 10,000 steps, we’re going to live to be 90, so we are not making middle age a thing. We’re going to just extend our youth span.”
Not interested in being middle aged! Not making middle age a thing! Extend our youth span! As if! I would be ROFL if it wasn’t all so tragic and infuriating. The BIC has been telling me what’s wrong with my body since I was a child, selling me products to fix it, and now this. We’ve learned from experience that business will try to turn us into big $$$, but words like “market” and “invest” don’t make me hopeful for any meaningful advance in the understanding and management of our middle chapter. Gwyneth saying that menopause just needs “a bit of rebranding" only makes my symptoms flare - especially the rage.
I want answers as much as the next woman on the ledge. I’m not opposed to things that help. Give me CBD, teach me about food and supplements that support the transition, let’s talk about hormones - but don’t sell me more “beauty” bullshit. We need guidance and information, but as
points out in her newsletter, Ladyparts:“Menopause training in med schools is a joke. They’re not teaching it or teaching it poorly. My own (amazing!) gynecologist, Dr. Molly McBride, an expert in menopausal medicine, says everything she knows about menopause she had to learn on her own or teach herself by digging through the paltry studies available.”
I wonder who all this rebranding is for and how far we’ve really come (or not). My desire for a doll-like face in middle school was essentially for the eyes of badgering boys. I didn’t mind the mustache, until they told me to. The male gaze, as it were, drives the BIC narrative. I think when Stacy London said, “Gen X is not interested in being middle-aged,” she really meant not interested in looking middle-aged. They go on about girl-boss empowerment, but give themselves away with Botox and fillers. Darcey Steinke, in her fascinating menopause memoir Flash Count Diary, wrote:
“Case in point: a short Italian man in a blue suit with a labia-pink tie reports from the podium that even though there are not enough long-term studies, he believes hormones are the best treatment for the menopausal vagina. He talks of shrinkage, lack of pliability, dryness. All his descriptions explain how the vagina might feel to an incoming penis. The vagina as a viable penis holder. Not how a vagina might feel to the woman it belongs to.”
The more things change …
I’m glad to see women talking about menopause, seeking solutions to the worst of it, commiserating and holding each other up. That was the impetus for this newsletter - we need to talk about it! We need to normalize the conversation, but the commodification of our suffering just seems cynical, peddled in part by blonde starlets and thought leaders (whatever that is) who are “not interested in being middle aged.” Well, I am middle-aged and, if I’m not interested in it, what will I miss? I’m not interested in artificially engineered “youth,” which isn’t youth at all but a sad loathing of one’s current self, a panic reach into the past. There’s no going back, ladies. Forward is the only way and, if we ignore the seductive marketing and embrace our brilliant selves, it might just be an amazing and empowering chapter.
Happy Friday!
Lisa
One thing to share this week —
’s memoir, Between Two Kingdoms, is pretty excellent. Omg the lives that people live. Perspective is a slap in the face, maybe a necessary one. I’ve also found lots of inspiration in her Isolation Journals. That such beauty and hope — and community! — can rise out of so much suffering is ultimately uplifting.
I also really loved this essay and, in particular, this sentence, which really captures my feelings about this anything-but-wonderful new trend:
"We’ve learned from experience that business will try to turn us into big $$$, but words like “market” and “invest” don’t make me hopeful for any meaningful advance in the understanding and management of our middle chapter. Gwyneth saying that menopause just needs “a bit of rebranding" only makes my symptoms flare - especially the rage."
Like you, I really enjoyed Darcey Steinke's memoir FLASH COUNT DIARY. (It's one of the books I drew upon while researching the menopause chapter of my midlife book.) I also found WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS by Heather Corinna and THE SLOW MOON CLIMBS: THE SCIENCE, HISTORY, AND MEANING OF MENOPAUSE to be both thought-provoking and incredibly validating. Maybe you've read and enjoyed these books, too.
Love this essay! Previously, one of the small upsides to menopause was the feeling that one was finally escaping the worst parts of the beauty industrial complex. I'm very interested, and ready to embrace, being middle aged.
As you mentioned, the only way is forward.