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hotflash inc.: how tiktok is helping us go through menopause
4 minute read
the first #menopausetok campaign was organized by new york city’s pix11 evening news anchor tamsen fadal. getty
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contrary to public opinion, tiktok hasn’t been about kids dancing for a long time. even back in 2020, when i first spent far too many long hours scrolling it, there was a critical mass of people over 40 and 50 talking about everything to do with them.
soon they were taking on menopause too, sharing symptoms, providing information, doing rants and having fun with it. it felt like finding my tribe in a place none of us were supposed to be.
flash forward almost two years and menopause has become a full-fledged genre, and people are noticing. take this bloomberg headline from august: the $15 billion menopause industry’s next target is tiktok.
one person i have watched blow up to more than 250k followers on the subject is toronto-based nutritionist andrea donsky. (full disclosure: we became tiktok friends some time in 2020, and although we’ve never met in person, we hosted an online summit together earlier this year).
“the thing that amazed me the most is the incredible community,” says donsky of tiktok. “everybody is so supportive, so kind, and i find everybody wants to help each other. and for me it’s my happy place … it allows me to really listen to women, to ask questions, to really hear what they are saying and to support and validate them.”
tiktok is the perfectly imperfect antidote to years of instagram
with all that engagement, donsky has taken to calling tiktok her full-time job. outside of knowing she’s hit the right tone, she loves the space for the reason many other people do: it’s the perfectly imperfect antidote to years of careful instagram curation.
“tiktok allows me to embrace creativity, and be funny and not take myself too seriously,” she says. “i think that’s it too, because menopause is so rough for so many of us, right? i took myself seriously for so long, and i find that tiktok allows me to go outside of my comfort zone.”
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donsky was one of the creators featured over the summer in the first #menopausetok campaign, organized by new york city’s pix11 evening news anchor tamsen fadal.
fadal just joined tiktok in february and had no idea where it would take her, but then she hit over a million views with an early video. rather than covering menopause, she soon found herself living the story, speaking openly about everything from her fears to her symptoms to going through a divorce. she’s planning another #menopausetok and will keep making videos, too, sharing everything that’s helped her along the way.
“i want other women to feel safe to talk and be open about a time when transition can be scary,” she says. “but it’s also a time to thrive. i got married in the middle of my menopause journey, and there is so much more to come.”
when is it time to monetize your platform?
of course once you have enough followers, the next natural thing to do is monetize your platform. one of the tiktok personalities featured in fadal’s campaign, barbados-based carol king, offers an ebook and one-on-one coaching. donsky and her business partner are launching a line of supplements, morphus. and the biggest tiktok menopause success of all so far may well be texas-based ob-gyn and culinary medicine specialist dr. mary claire haver. since joining at the urging of her daughters, she’s blown up to 1.8 million followers, becoming tiktok’s unofficial menopause expert. she has also opened a private clinic — all of which has helped to propel her forthcoming diet book to the no. 1 spot on amazon.
sometimes i wonder if tiktok will ever get tired of watching women act out walking into a room and forgetting why, or going to bed covered in ice packs. but then i see british mum therese ryan rapping along to nicki minaj’s super freaky girl about her menopause woes (700k views) and realize there’s a pretty big runway. the diminishing and fluctuating hormones we experience in perimenopause can impact almost every bodily function, they can be scary and they can make you feel very, very alone.
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so if it makes me feel better when i make a tiktok about my ever-tingling fingertips and someone comments, “me too!” then it’s completely understandable when brit kate beavis goes viral talking about her itchy ears.
for now at least, tiktok is a welcoming space for us, a place where it’s ok to speak about these things out loud, where being a certain age is an asset, not a liability, and where you can find a community of people who deeply understand — as even the people who love you cannot — exactly what you are going through.
ann marie mcqueen is a journalist with 25 years of experience covering health, wellness, science and more, and when she realized she was in perimenopause five years ago, she decided to make this transition her beat. she has since become a global expert on the subject through her platform hotflash inc., where she helps people navigate the gap between transitional and holistic treatments with evidence and experience-based research. she will be writing regularly on all things related to menopause and mid-life.
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