Menopause is getting a reputational makeover on social media, as TikTok users and creators destigmatise this phase of life and the symptoms surrounding it.
Medical professionals-turned-influencers like Dr Mary Claire Haver, Dr Louise Newson and Dr Naomi Potter have garnered big followings online by offering women advice on how to manage their perimenopause and menopause symptoms, attracting communities who otherwise would go through it alone. A number of prominent celebrities have also recently launched menopause-focused ventures.
In February, actor Halle Berry founded Respin Health, an online programme pairing women with doctors and health coaches to develop personalised health plans. Naomi Watts’s brand Stripes sells supplements, skincare and vaginal wellness products targeted at women going through menopause and perimenopause. Drew Barrymore and Gwyneth Paltrow are angel investors in Evernow, a digital platform that provides prescription menopause therapies like estrogen patches and oral progesterone.
Beauty retailers are following suit, dedicating shelf space to the once taboo category. Ulta Beauty and Sephora launched menopause categories in 2022 and 2023, respectively, introducing brands like Womaness, Joylux and Stripes, which offer support for hair loss, vaginal dryness and hot flushes, among other symptoms. The retailers have continued to expand since, and Ulta debuted a line of hormone care products earlier this year.
There’s money to be made in opening up about and normalising menopause. A recent report by Women’s Health Access Matters, an organisation that funds female health research, valued the menopause market at almost $18 billion in 2024 while forecasting it to reach $27 billion by 2030. According to Newson, a large part of that growth is down to women educating themselves about their health, rather than looking to others to diagnose their symptoms.
“In the past, there have been symptoms of course,” she says, “but women have often been misdiagnosed as having depression, anxiety, irritable bowel syndrome and the like because doctors have not understood that perimenopause or menopause could be the cause of these symptoms. What is changing quickly is that women are understanding the impact of changing hormones in their bodies. They are making the diagnosis often themselves and so are seeking treatment more readily.”
Hormonal health has entered mainstream conversation, shaping everything from skincare to supplements and beyond.
Colette Courtion, CEO of the midlife intimate wellness brand Joylux, had a similar diagnosis. “Historically, menopause has been a deeply stigmatised topic. The cultural narrative positioned it as the end of vitality rather than a transition into a new, empowered stage of life. Because of this, brands and investors largely ignored the category, and medical research on menopause remained underfunded for decades.”
Now, she says, “Women in their 40s, 50s and beyond are more engaged in wellness than ever before, and they expect the same level of innovation and care for menopause as they do for other aspects of their health.” This presents a significant opportunity for brands — but it’s a category that must be intimately understood in order to operate in.
Consumers seek community-first brands
When it comes to receiving the help they need, women at this stage of life have often looked to other women for advice on how to manage their symptoms. The new wave of menopause brands have built on this, incorporating direct access to health professionals or other women who are experiencing menopause into their brand experience.
This kind of community-building takes many forms: message boards, online consultations, one-to-one meetings with health professionals and group meetings with fellow women. Womaness sells supplements for menopause-related symptoms like hair loss and brain fog, skincare, sexual wellness devices tailored to the needs of 50-plus women. The brand also has a private Facebook group for its members to share tips and insights into dealing with their symptoms. Menopause and perimenopause supplement brand Health Her is another example, offering customers the chance to download a free menopause tracking app from their website. Coined the “personal trainer for your menopause”, the platform is designed to help women track emerging symptoms, period changes and leverage expert advice from gynaecologists and nutritionists.
But it isn’t just product-facing brands finding favour in community. Menopause telehealth companies like Winona, Plushcare and Midi offer one-to-one video consultations with physicians as well as group Q&A sessions. Telehealth company Stella runs a blog where women can share their menopause experiences. The aim with each is to give customers access to specialised treatment and emotionally supportive communities to normalise the conversation around menopause and ensure women get the correct care.
Personalisation reigns supreme
However, because every woman’s experience of menopause is unique, treatment must be personalised in order to be effective, says Potter, a tricky hurdle for any brand to clear. Pairing women with licensed doctors, nutritionists, fitness experts and the like is one way to personalise care. Another is to tap into developments in artificial intelligence healthcare. Respin Heath’s AI analyses over 150 data points of a member’s menopause experience to develop a personalised plan for movement, nutrition, stress management and sleep. Evernow has partnered with AI healthcare company Hippocratic to help create tailored treatment recommendations for its services, which span everything from hormone pills to retinol creams. Meanwhile, Alloy has built its own suite of proprietary AI and technology-enabled doctor-assist tools to help its menopause physicians care for a greater number of patients, regardless of location.
“AI is transforming healthcare, so why is menopause still stuck in the past? We finally have the data, the technology, the machine learning tools and the urgency to personalise menopause care at scale,” Ally Tam Tumasov, CEO of Respin Health, says. “Imagine a future where treatment isn’t trial and error, but tailored precisely to you; where a woman’s individual health trend isn’t just observed but predicted.”
The dangers of AI healthcare have been discussed extensively, from system errors that lead to misdiagnosis, biased algorithms that result in unequal care, and security breaches that release confidential records. And it’s not just AI. Women looking to brands and influencers for their healthcare, rather than going to see a doctor in-person, opens the door to multiple dangers.
In September 2024, The Menopause Society released a statement in response to concern from members about the significant increase in misinformation promoted by some healthcare professionals. Asked for comment, Dr Monica Christmas, associate medical director at The Menopause Society, says: “There is a huge danger in the promotion of mis- and disinformation with significant downsides — financial waste on ineffective products, delays in seeking evidence-based treatments and potential harm from the products themselves.” But, she adds, “normalising the menopause conversation is powerful”.
Menopause merges with wellness
As the menopause industry grows, the lines are blurring between menopause care and the wellness market at large. As Potter says: “An important development for the future of menopause care is the shift towards holistic menopause care — not just treating hot flushes or mood changes in isolation, but looking at how menopause intersects with everything from mental health to cardiovascular risk, bone health, sleep, work and relationships.”
Joylux and Respin recently partnered to develop the vFit+ device, which uses red‑light technology to build up pelvic floor strength and can be paired with the Joylux app to track progress and access educational content about menopausal wellness. With a sleek design and a nearly $500 price tag, the product has the look and feel of a skincare device and the metric-tracking abilities of a smartwatch or Oura ring.
Major beauty retailers are also picking up on the intersection of wellness and menopause care. “As the conversation around menopause becomes more open and destigmatised, we’re seeing greater consumer demand for solutions that support this important life stage,” says Laura Beres, VP of wellness at Ulta Beauty. “With that, we have seen continued momentum and interest around the category since we introduced menopause care into our assortment in 2022.” Beres highlights Womaness’s Let’s Neck and Me No Pause supplements as particularly popular products, “thanks to their targeted symptom support and consciously formulated ingredients”, in addition to Vichy’s menopause-specific, dermatologically developed Neovadiol skincare line and Better Not Younger’s lead in haircare with products addressing hormonal changes.
Moving forward, Beres says, Ulta will “explore more cross-category storytelling — highlighting menopause care within beauty routines, wellness rituals and educational content both in-store and online”.
Lisa Payne, head of beauty at trends intelligence firm Stylus, points to the opportunity beauty and personal care brands have to tap into growing demand for instant and long-term treatments. “Many brands are already capitalising with cooling sprays for hot flushes or hormone-helping supplements, but we are expecting to see more innovation in holistic beauty presentations that take into consideration the full spectrum of symptoms and changes that occur for women in their midlife journeys — from brightening skincare and intimacy gels to mind-soothing scented body or haircare.”
Payne points out, however, that brands need to be careful to avoid backlash. “Gen M [women at the menopause age] is savvy and isn’t prepared to pay more for products wrapped in menopausal packaging. They want to see results and the science behind them. Made of More, as an example, features information about its own proprietary HC+ Complex, which is the basis of its menopause cosmetics,” she explains. Boots’s No7 skincare line is another example, having launched the brand after five years of research with the University of Manchester and collaboration with over 7,000 menopausal women to ensure products effectively address their symptoms. Supplement brand Bonafide has created its products with insight from a team of experts who have backgrounds in clinical research and medical drug development.
To stand out in an increasingly crowded market, brands must leverage science and credibility, developing their own expert-backed ways to address menopause symptoms. They’ll also resonate by building authentic, expert-led communities, leveraging AI to deliver personalised wellness solutions, and treating midlife women as an influential consumer force — not an afterthought.
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