“I don’t want to talk about hot flashes or things you can read elsewhere… So many negative messages!”, said the acclaimed gynecologist and obstetrician Marimer Pérez to SModa when she confessed to being tired of the media only focusing on the negative aspects of menopause. “There are aspects I thought about discussing with my psychologist that menopause has resolved for me. Things start to matter much less to you,” assured the author of Don’t Let Go: Real Stories of an Obstetrician(Lunwerg Editores, 2025).
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Fortunately, after having been submerged in silence and invisibility, perimenopause and menopause are coming to light with many social media profiles and celebrities talking about what happens to them during these life stages. However, at the same time, the industry is taking advantage of the growing interest in these stages that, if previously silenced, are now seen as an irresistible business opportunity. Millions of women are being exploited by the “menopause gold rush,” and many experts assure that companies, celebrities, and influencers take advantage of the scarcity of reliable information on the subject. And in doing so, they impose a certain pressure on many women.
This is the case of Clara Montagut, an illustrator, artist, and educator, who raised her voice on her social media with some stories. “I’m happy to have visibility in all stages of our lives, that we stop being invisible and talk about it all the time. But beware of the bombardment,” she warned. “Girls in peri and menopause, don’t you think so much bombardment of training, supplementation, and coaching is a bit overwhelming? We fall back into consumerism and pressure on our bodies and our wallets. Hot flash-washing is the new pinkwashing,” she said. Upon contacting her, she tells SModa that women, after a certain age, begin to be invisible to almost everyone… Except for marketing. “We go from the pressure of Tampax to that of Clearblue, and now to that of magnesium. We are visible, but we are still imperfect in the eyes of others. No longer for being perfect, but for being responsible for not aging healthily,” she comments.
“I don’t have the salary or the hours in the day to toast sesame before grinding it, to do strength exercises (let alone have a personal trainer), to soak chia, to make a pill organizer with more colorful capsules than my octogenarian mother’s, melatonin for insomnia, to walk 10,000 steps daily, sunbathe 10 minutes daily, take care of my mental health with meditation and therapy, boil bones for an hour to make collagen broth… It gives me anxiety just writing it,” she says with humor.
It is here that Dr. Cristina Urzaiz, gynecologist at Clínica Premium Marbella, assures that menopause must be valued appropriately. “It’s wonderful that it’s being made visible, normalized, and that we know we have many tools to maintain and improve women’s quality of life, but it cannot be used for other purposes, taking advantage of the fear and uncertainty it can inspire,” she explains.
Because parallel to this narrative shift, a phenomenon has emerged that some experts call menowashing. It refers to the tendency of brands, individuals, and companies to appropriate the discourse on menopause for profit, thus combining the interest in breaking the taboo with a growing commercial strategy that sees this stage as a business opportunity.
The figures clearly reflect this. The global market for products and services associated with menopause — which includes everything from cosmetics and supplements to digital applications and medical technology — reached 16.9 billion dollars in 2023 and, according to sector forecasts, could exceed 24.4 billion in 2030. This growth is partly due to the aging population, but also to the renewed interest of brands in targeting women who, despite having significant purchasing power, remained off the radar of many wellness and health industries for years.
“The problem is not what is sold, but what is sold and how it is sold,” warns Lucía Yturriaga, menopause activist and founder of Womanhood, who believes that the worrying thing is not that there are brands or products aimed at women in this stage, but that some companies try to take advantage of ignorance, discomfort, or anxiety to place empty marketing. “Lots of packaging, lots of opportunistic discourse, and little substance. Changing the color of the packaging, putting trendy words on the label, or launching a supposedly empathetic campaign is not enough if there is no quality, a serious formulation, evidence, or a real answer to what we need behind it. We don’t need less market: we need more rigor, more quality, and less opportunism disguised as listening,” says the author of It’s Hot and It’s Me (Grijalbo, 2026).
The positive aspects
Dr. Radharani Jiménez, author of Perimenopause Exists(Grijalbo, 2026), has focused for years on sending positive messages about menopause, which should stop being seen as a disease and be viewed as a natural process. “Women need to know the changes involved in the cessation of our ovaries’ activity and the decrease of our so-called ‘sex hormones’ beyond stopping periods. Knowledge is the only possible way to empower ourselves. There are many women for whom menopause is the best stage of their lives, and a large part of my mission is for it to be so for all,” she explains. And she assures that to achieve this, tools are needed. “For us to live menopause fully, most of us need support, information, tools, and some lifestyle changes. If you tell a woman who barely sleeps, whose whole body aches, has hot flashes, and feels sad that this is the best stage of her life, but we don’t help her solve her problems, we will make her feel even worse. That’s why I frequently address those who suffer, because they need to feel heard and validated to recover themselves,” she comments.
Yturriaga comments that if positive messages are lacking, it might be because the view on female aging remains very poor, while it is common to place women who are no longer of childbearing age in the realm of deficiency. “I believe more positive messages are needed, but truly positive ones, not cheesy or empty. Messages that don’t deny that there can be symptoms or difficulties, but also don’t present this stage as an inevitable decline. Because it isn’t. Fear often comes not only from what happens in the body, but from the cultural narrative we have built around aging, femininity, and the value of women. And that narrative, fortunately, can also be changed,” she says hopefully.
Affected by early perimenopause, Naomi Watts has been fighting for years to break taboos about menopause. Author ofI Dare to Tell: Everything I Would Have Liked to Know About Menopause (Lunwerg, 2025), she wrote an essay for The Guardian in which she shared the opinion of one of her friends, journalist Mariella Frostrup. “In middle age, men buy motorcycles or fast cars. Women get doctorates,” she asserted. “Many men seem to slow down a bit at this age and think about retirement and starting to play golf. And women seem to become much more determined, ambitious, and focused as our oxytocin decreases, we lose affection for small children, and our children leave home…And that’s an opportunity. While men slow down and go to the golf course, here we are, ready to take control!” she says.
Ana Lombardía, a sexologist who teaches the online course “Sexuality and Couple in Perimenopause and Menopause,” also wants to share the positive aspects of these phases. “Many women state that, during menopause, they experience a rediscovery of sexuality: they prioritize themselves more, know their bodies better, free themselves from insecurities regarding their appearance, and manage to enjoy themselves more than before. This may sound contradictory to the idea we have of women’s sexuality in menopause, but it is important to dispel that myth,” she assures.
She indicates that for many women, the fact that less lubrication makes penetration a less attractive practice for them has led them to open up to others that do bring them greater pleasure, such as masturbation, oral sex, and full-body stimulation. “For many, menopause brings the end of coitocentrism and, with it, ways of feeling pleasure that were relegated to the background,” she says. Because as Anna Freixas assures in Our Menopause (Capitán Swing, 2024), “it is possible to feel more sexually free at 60 than at 25.”
Advances
To begin, Urzaiz wants to applaud the existing advances, starting with listening to and validating a woman’s symptoms when she comes for a consultation. “The accompaniment to understand and accept the symptomatic array in its vital, emotional, and social context and, finally, the offering of comprehensive, personalized, and adapted therapy for each woman, are vital,” she assures.
Lucía Yturriaga clarifies that despite the many advances, it is important to remember that for a long time, pain, insomnia, brain fog, anxiety, hot flashes, or mood swings have been minimized as if they were exaggerations, as if being part of the female experience meant enduring it. “There has been a very clear bias there: cultural, medical, and social. Women have been taught to tolerate a lot of discomfort and to apologize even when we are unwell. The good news is that, little by little, that is changing. Today there is more conversation, more information, and also more awareness that perimenopause and menopause do not have to be lived with resignation,” she says before commenting that there are ways to mitigate many symptoms. “The important thing is to understand that there is no single valid solution for everyone, but different tools depending on what happens to each woman and how it affects her life. We must change the approach and stop asking ourselves if it is normal to suffer and start asking why we continue to tolerate suffering without seeking relief. Progress is not just talking more about the topic; progress is a woman being able to say ‘this is affecting me’ and not receiving condescension, but rather listening, useful information, and real options to feel better. Because it’s one thing for the body to change, and quite another to assume that suffering is the obligatory toll. It is not,” she says.
Asun Arias, a pharmacist specializing in women’s health, looks hopefully to the future. “We are on the right path, which is none other than deeply understanding the signs and symptoms that occur in women during climacteric. It is necessary to know them at a molecular, cellular, and clinical level to be able to create supplements, cosmetics, and drugs — as is being done — that help improve women’s quality of life at this stage and make it the best possible,” she says. “In this way, supplements are appearing that are helping to alleviate hot flashes, irritability, insomnia, or genitourinary syndrome, with extraordinary results in many women before resorting to medication, which is also another great ally,” she adds.
“I think one of the best things that has happened to me in life has been menopause. And I’m sure I’m not the only one,” writes Rosa Montero in El País Semanal, where she comments that the pains she suffered with each menstruation, along with “the fear of an unwanted pregnancy,” disappeared with menopause. “I’m fed up with the pathologization of the feminine. It infuriates me that natural biological processes are socially converted into frailties and ailments. Undoubtedly, there must be women who have a bad time, even a very bad time, during menopause, but I am sure that it is a minority percentage, and that it would be even lower if we did not docilely submit to the self-fulfilling prophecy of awaiting menopause with terror,” Montero wrote. And that is why we wanted to collect in this article the testimonies of different experts who speak about some of the benefits of menopause and emphasize something fundamental: that there is no single menopause. To conclude, nothing like remembering that in The Renewed Woman (Salamandra, 2023), Louann Brizendine refers to menopause as ‘renewal,’ because for her, “this phase is an opportunity to grow in wisdom, strength, and resilience. Renewal is a wonderful portal that leads us to the best years of our lives.”
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