Rebranding Menopause Vs. Biohacking it?

Effing hell, is THIS how the AI really sees us? Is a radical form of womanhood even possible? Or do we moonshot this mothertrucker?

Fellow Empresses, How are you all?

So, this was supposed to be a simple, straightforward post about how… in our new pseudo-post-pandemic world, you're in a meeting, presenting before a room full of smarmy, bloated white guys when suddenly you begin to melt and sprinkler all over your PowerPoint handouts. And how your smug, overbearing boss, who has a name like “Chip” and a toothbrush mustache that's always littered with crumbs, or encrusted with some mysterious, expensive Adaptogen smoothie that's meant to keep him alive forever, leans forward to hand you a tissue with a smirk on his hormone-free face, and how this moment ALL could have been avoided with a simple, discreet product from a company called The Good Patch and their hemp-based patch called Hot Flash that prevents hot flashes for up to 12 hours. So, even if you're taking HRT and your hot flashes are at a minimum, you can wear the patch prophylactically like a hot flash condom for those big meeting days so that Chip doesn't ever get to prove what a faux-chivalrous dickhead he can be in your moments of midlife hormonal frailty—yet another justification why you don't have the big job and he does... because he's got a fucking tissue and no wackadoo hormones.

But then, a journalist named Ann Marie McQueen of hotflash inc, who covers menopause and midlife women's issues regularly on Instagram and across a variety of media outlets conducted a genius experiment some weeks back. She fed the words “menopause” and “woman” into ChatGPT sketch and here's what it produced:

It’s drawing in wrinkles and bulges a lot of us don’t even have (yet). But, if this is how the AI, or the algorithm, sees us based on all it has learned from all the possible sources on the planet, we’re a bit fucked. You can see how deeply ingrained the stigma is, how systemically, imaginatively, and stereotypically pervasive it is throughout mainstream media and all modern conceptions of womanhood. 

My initial reaction was one of horror and disgust. I wanted to immediately counter these grim images by compiling THE EMPRESS100, a list of extraordinary peri/menopausal women with elegant photos and bios. It’s actually not hard. Accomplished, undercelebrated women smackdab in the middle of peri/menopause are literally everywhere you look.

When Drew Barrymore said we need to rebrand menopause at Oprah's summit on the topic, I wondered aloud... Oprah's now almost 70, right? Hasn't she been trying to do this since she was 50? And isn't Gwyneth Paltrow, Queen Bee influencer of all things wellness, trying to do the same with goop health? Hasn't Jennifer Aniston been trying to do this for the last decade with her Vital Proteins collagen mix? Drew wasn't kidding about the need to rebrand peri/menopause, but is it naive to think ordinary civilians can do it if these fancy, monied people can't even swing it? 

That's what THE EMPRESS AGE was supposed to be about. I decided peri/menopause was just so freakin' hellish, I started a simple side hustle obsessively curating a better experience for women one product at a time. It's a little like consumer reports for menopause. I called it THE EMPRESS AGE because I was so sick of the patriarchy always implying that there were only three phases of a woman's life: Maiden/Mother/Crone. I think there's great power in the messy middle... between the Mother and the Crone phases and I wanted to give it some deep grace and humor. But even as I try to write a book about it, the publishing world is totally resistant. “There just isn’t enough interest.” Said one agent only yesterday. Really?

But then, is rebranding even enough?

Although it’s received mixed reviews, there is a crazy interesting debate that takes place in the new reboot of DEAD RINGERS starring Rachel Weisz as twin gynecologists looking for investment to open a birthing center and women's research center.

Of menopause, the investors around the table see a tremendous opportunity, and a young, defiant female biohacker says, excuse me, rebrand it? Why not just nuke it? 

When one doctor proposes that “No, menopause should be rebranded as a natural, but radical form of womanhood,” she is met with palpable contempt and derision for espousing a kind of vomit-inducing idealism that misses the real profit opportunity.

The other doctor proposes delaying the onset of menopause indefinitely by removing a sample of ovarian tissue from a woman at age 20 and reimplanting it in her at age 40 or 45 so that she retains the skin, the hair, the energy, the fertility, and the sex drive, of a 20-year-old. By doing this, you make menopause completely treatable. You make it bespoke women’s medicine from embryology up to death. The investors practically throw money at her. 

But what do we lose in forestalling this evolutionary rite of passage? Do we lose the wisdom that comes with the trials and the transformation of the body and its own scorekeeping? Do we become these artificial Peter Pan women who never quite grow up? And what does that do to our perspective and our innate wisdom? And how does it create new healthcare classes? For those who are insured, menopause becomes completely treatable and no longer a concern, but for those who are not, it's still inevitable and even more markedly polarized in its manifestation.

And if you don’t have hardships to bond over with other women, what does that do? If you watched Drew have her first hot flash in front of an entire live studio audience with Jennifer Aniston—it felt strangely tribal. Are there ‘found’ families to be had in the shared problem-solving and witnessing that takes place in this messy middle of peri/menopause amid all these trickster symptoms? Or am I making too much out of it? And should I just be grateful for the extended shelf-life? The way I am grateful for my little nightly dose of HRT?

To the biohacker, rebranding menopause is just thinking really fucking small because we’re accepting menopause as inevitable, when, in fact, it's a huge biological moonshot. It's an evolutionary, bespoke, medical puzzle that if solved, would free women up to pursue all manner of other innovative creative, intellectual, work, and endeavors. 

What happens when women don't have to suffer, and they have residual energy and joy to allocate for something else? Is there something besides wisdom that takes its place? Something more generative?

In her bestselling book, The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness, Meghan O'Rourke challenges a trope common in the world of chronic illness: the wisdom narrative. That out of all your suffering, you are rendered wiser, all-knowing, and powerful because of your illness.

But peri/menopause is not an illness. It's a transition, an evolution, a biological imperative. So, does the Wisdom Narrative still hold here? Probably, but in a much more complex and compelling way. The wisdom becomes less about the suffering itself and more about what we do with it. How we respond Is what THE EMPRESS AGE is all about.

Because how much value do we want to place or energy do we want to expend toward reclaiming an identity like that of the crone or the hag, which is meant to ensure erasure, invisibility, and even a dangerous status?

What I'm saying is... we're leaving money on the table here, ladies. Empress-level money. 

And even if it's a combination of both rebranding and biohacking... wherein a woman enters her Empress Age, and instead of it being a time when she is rapidly decompensating and struggling against all the symptoms, she undergoes a procedure that is her renaissance, that results in her regeneration to age 20, no doubt, humans being human, there will still be some messy middle, some moment of adjustment, despite the biohackers’ utopian vision. Yes, maybe a few women will wake up feeling magically refreshed and 20 again. But one would imagine many women waking up with a deep sense of existential vertigo.

There are so many ways it could play out—or may already be playing out without us even realizing it. The question is, what do we, as women, want? What do we value? Wisdom, plus the feeling of youth? Can we have both? Is suffering a prerequisite for wisdom? Or is it just a stupid waste of time and energy? Do we want to nuke menopause altogether? Forestall it indefinitely? Would we be happy with an extra 20 years and then settle for aging gracefully? Or would the feeling of our young selves prove so primally addictive, so alluring that we couldn't stop? Would we become like absurd cosmetic surgery addicts—but addicted to our own endocrine systems?

Drop a note in the comments and let us know your thoughts as we are closer to this reality than we might think. 

Sorry to get all heady on you. We will have more of THE EMPRESS Nookie Series in our next post on best-of-breed vibrators. There are some fabulous giveaways afoot. Until then.

Yours in Grandeur,

p.s. If you are so inclined, follow us on IG for flash content & upcoming giveaways. We’re at https://www.instagram.com/the.empress.age/ and we’d love to see you there!

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