*help for my dissertation please!!* How do beauty brands portray Menopause?

[emilypeth]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently writing my University dissertation on the beauty industry for over 50's and need some help!

I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you feel beauty brands are portraying women of your age - positively, negatively, do you feel they are just ignoring you?

I'm also specifically looking at how beauty brands are educating people on and dealing with Menopause (or not).

So, any thoughts would be super helpful! Have discussions, go off on tangents, everything helps, thanks!

Disclaimer: by contributing to the discussion you agree to the possibility of anonymously having your words published in my final year dissertation report

Look at Boom cosmetics in the US, specifically targeted at older women.

emily, my experience is that ads for stuff like face cream don't address the existence of menopause at all. You get references to 'mature skin' and wrinkles, and up pops Jane Fonda or Helen Mirren looking 'radiant' (professionally made up and spritzed).

Similarly hair products talk about 'covering those greys' but never allude to menpause.

It's as though the natural act of ageing must be resisted and fought against, with these products, whilst the 'beauty industry' studiously avoids reality of women's lives.

I can't think of a single perfume advert that makes sense features a mature woman.

Apparently I need laxatives. These are the only things that seem to feature mature women in the advertising.

And Tena pants

They never really advertise specifically at menopausal women, it's always a famous actress looking glossy and radiant and very airbrushed and perfect.

A few years ago I remember the Dove adverts - real women, real beauty kind of thing - but menopause wasn't mentioned. It was all trying to be very woke but to me it came across as this woman is beautiful DESPITE her freckles, this woman HAS GREY HAIR shock horror and we are using her in our advert, telling us to love our flaws (even if you never considered your wrinkles/freckles/red hair/whatever to be a problem)

A lot of adverts want me to look "younger", I want to look like I'm not red faced,wild and about to rip your head off.

I haven't seen the beauty industry mention menopause. They cover ageing in general, which goes far beyond the menopause. I think that skin care wise, it's anti ageing that has the biggest market. Beauty and skin care is largely about enhancing and maintaining attractive, youthful looks. So I don't think menopausal age is ignored, but it's marketed as anti ageing and it's a huge market.
I don't see any education on the menopause, although I can't see that it's the place of the beauty industry to do this anyway?

@emilypath I think there might be a separate part of MN where you can list this as a survey.

I was like that recently and I can't take HRT so I was kind of lost. It might be worth eating fewer carbs and sugar. It really worked for me. So unless I have a big piece of cake (which I probs do too often) I sleep better and don't have the urge to rip off any heads!

The beauty industry is all about the superficial, how you look, so I can't see how it can relate to the menopause as such - for me menopause is very much a medical, hormonal situation involving changes to my body and mind with looks being the very least of my worries, i.e. the night wakings, night sweats, tiredness, anxiety, aching, moodiness, all these things are not tied in with the 'beauty' industry. So I suppose I don't fully understand your dissertation aims. Certainly the beauty industry does make products and adverts aimed at the over mid 40's/50's age group, but I've never heard menopause in particular mentioned and can't see why it would be.

Have you had ethical approval for your study? If so, how would we contact you after contributing here if we had any questions? Effectively I'm asking how we would get equivalent of a participant information sheet.

I am just about hitting peri, (and buy a lot of beauty products), and don't feel that I've seen any beauty campaigns or products that relate to the menopause.

I can see space for this though - especially something involving essential oils that would help with symptoms.

damn, I don't care about beauty product ads. Am I supposed to notice them? Why?

@emilypeth Maybe you need to set this up as a proper survey and you will need to get the okay from MNHQ for this.

You may not know but there is a copyright on all posts on MN which I assume means no one can use any posts for anything without their consent. I don't see how you can guarantee the authenticity of any comments either that are just posts on a forum unless you set it up as a survey, naming your university, with the legal disclaimers (appreciate you have tried to do that.) Good luck with it all!

@JinglingHellsBells thank you for your suggestions! I’ve checked with my university ethics guidelines and as I have put a disclaimer stating that contribution to the discussion means you consent to the possible anonymous use if your comments. As for the authenticity, it’s just for me to get consumer feedback and doesn’t need to be professional opinions. I shall have a look regarding the MN guidelines

@emilypleth But MN has copyright on all posts- you can't just lift material and use it in your own work. You can perhaps take the essence or consensus but you cannot life material.

It's illegal without getting MNHQ consent. Otherwise, loads of journalists would be coming here and asking questions and lifting material for articles. (I know you arent a journalist but the principle is the same.)

As for being anon, well yes, everyone is anon because they use 'usernames'. But how can you refer to them in your dissertation other than by a user name?

I agree with PPs. If someone suggested you come to MN then they probably meant you should set up a survey for research. It happens regularly and gives you more usable data.

As for your question I'm answering because our posts here may impact on the questions you ask in the survey the beauty industry could address menopause because there are direct crossovers between symptoms and beauty products eg

• sweating/hot flushes impact on concealers and moisturisers
• hair changing thickness and becoming brittle impact on hair dyes and hair products
• sweating/hot flushes impact on deodorants, perfumes, etc But they don't tend to address it all. Menopause adverts are focused on tena pants and multi-vitamins, and oddly seem to have women who are either ladies who lunch or are rushing to meetings. I'd imagine most of us are still juggling families and DCs yet there's no acknowledgement that menopausal or peri-menopausal women still have young children and aren't just old crones.

@JinglingHellsBells I’ll check out the laws of course and obviously won’t use anything if it’s not legal. However, a survey would produce different results as would require specific questions. I was advised to start a discussion, whether I use the answers directly or not it has been very helpful so thank you all!

@CherryPlum I have to disagree. Your skin and hair can change so much during menopause. My skin has gone really dry and blotchy but creams for really dry skin are heavy, and make my hot flushes worse. The right products might be out there but nobody talks about menopause and skin, and now I feel like I'm starting to age, I want to take even better care of my skin!

@emilypeth I think your supervisors or whoever is advising you are naive. They ought to appreciate that on some online sites, the content is copyrighted. This is in the small print of MN T&Cs. MNHQ take a hardline view of surveys posted unless they have allowed them.
Just don't get yourself into trouble for the sake of contacting NM to ask where you stand on using the site for material. Best to email them to keep yourself in the clear. Good luck!

Healthspan have beauty and hair products specifically for menopausal women.
I am sure their are others out there but I have not seen any big brands that advertise products specifically for menopause. I still think it is hidden away within the beauty industry. There are definitely big gaps in the market to be filled with products for menopausal women as health requirements for flushing skin and thinning hair need very different formulas to regular products.

I'm menopausal and under 50. I don't exist to the beauty industry but then I think the beauty industry is a load of old bollocks so I don't mind much.

I use a basic moisturiser and minimal makeup. I have very few wrinkles and very little desire to look younger. My eldest child is almost 20 - of course I don't look like I used to!

Thanks everyone for your replies, everything has been so helpful! Also got a very quick padlet here that would be great if you could comment on and share! Thanks!
padlet.com/emilymadisonpeth/beautyindustry_opinions

t's illegal without getting MNHQ consent. Otherwise, loads of journalists would be coming here and asking questions and lifting material for articles. (I know you arent a journalist but the principle is the same.)

How do all the articles appear in the mail, sun etc then lifted straight from here without permission?

Or are you saying @mnhq are giving express permission for these rags to use content as they wish?

Or are you saying @mnhq are giving express permission for these rags to use content as they wish?

Yes, in a word. I think there is something on those lines buried in their T&Cs ( as well as how they collect and use all our data...every time we log in or read.)

I think that MNHQ answered this question once on another part of the site and the answer was yes- they are happy to share info with the tabloids- they either turn a blind eye to it, or they encourage it as it gives them publicity too. They certainly don't try to stop it.