Whenever a thing is known by a euphemism, it’s probably a thing that makes people squirm. Long has this been the case with menopause, or “the change,” which is typically spoken in a whisper, with an air of tragedy or a joke about a sweaty lady with frizzy hair wailing about something, probably her inevitable slide into irrelevance. Menopause has historically been treated as a way of saying not dead, exactly, but part dead for sure.
Then there’s post menopause, which is the period-free rest of your life, when the risk of heart disease and osteoporosis and pretty much everything else shoots way up. The Gen X women who are now reaching these milestones didn’t endure the indignities of Tae Bo just to cut their hair into tidy little bobs and accept these symptoms without a fight.
It’s no accident that this is coming at a time when the exceedingly narrow confines of beauty are beginning to stretch. Race and size are becoming more diverse in fashion. So why not age, too? There is a line to be drawn between the celebration of menopause and the ascendance of what we might call menocore in fashion, all soft fabrics and gentle shapes.
The telemedicine start-ups deal largely in the prescribing of hormone replacement therapies, using a business model that has found success in other sectors. Hims & Hers Health, for example, which uses telemedicine to prescribe generic versions of Rogaine, Viagra and a range of antidepressants, birth control and other medications on gender-specific sites, has a market capitalization of more than $1 billion.
“To discover an entire category of health care that is entirely underserved is very, very rare,” said Alicia Jackson, the 42-year-old CEO of the menopause telemedicine company Evernow, which started this year and offers text consultation with trained doctors who arrange for the delivery of the appropriate prescription hormone therapies on a subscription basis.
Those investors, Liza Landsman and Vanessa Larco, had indeed done their research: After exploring the possibilities for funding fertility companies, Larco said, she was shocked to come across statistics revealing how few gynaecologists are even trained in menopausal medicine, and how many were uncomfortable treating the symptoms of menopause.