Latest / QUESTION EVERYTHING / Stacy London: Why It's Not Too Early To Talk About Menopause + Other Life Lessons Like Going Broke, Getting Fired, and Finding Your Self Worth

Transcript

Stacy London: Why It's Not Too Early To Talk About Menopause + Other Life Lessons Like Going Broke, Getting Fired, and Finding Your Self Worth · QUESTION EVERYTHING

0:04
Speaker 1: Big things happen when you're pretty, pretty bold, pretty clever,
0:08
Speaker 1: pretty strong. I'm Danielle Robe, and each week my guests
0:12
Speaker 1: and I have conversations that put a new spin on pretty.
0:17
Speaker 2: This is pretty smart.
0:19
Speaker 1: I turned thirty last year, and I would do an
0:22
Speaker 1: interview where be in conversation with some younger women. I
0:25
Speaker 1: would say they were like twenty two to twenty seven,
0:28
Speaker 1: and they'd say to me, oh my god, you look
0:31
Speaker 1: so good for thirty. What does that even mean? First
0:37
Speaker 1: of all, who doesn't look good at thirty? Secondly, I
0:41
Speaker 1: kept thinking about what they said.
0:43
Speaker 2: I could not get it out of my mind.
0:45
Speaker 1: I'd never consider that turning thirty meant I would look
0:48
Speaker 1: any different, that I was considered older to a group
0:51
Speaker 1: of people.
0:52
Speaker 2: So I thought about it, and I thought about.
0:54
Speaker 1: It, and I realized that someone had told these twenty
0:57
Speaker 1: two to twenty seven year olds that they had an
0:59
Speaker 1: expiration date if they only knew that it.
1:02
Speaker 2: Keeps getting better. So enter today's episode.
1:06
Speaker 1: How different would our lives look if we embraced aging
1:10
Speaker 1: instead of fearing it. What if right now, in your
1:13
Speaker 1: twenties or thirties or forties, you could erase the notion
1:17
Speaker 1: that your best days are behind you.
1:20
Speaker 2: A revolutionary thought, right.
1:22
Speaker 1: My guest today has been on a mission to reframe
1:24
Speaker 1: the way we think about aging. Stacy London is a
1:27
Speaker 1: stylist known for the TLC show What Not to Wear.
1:30
Speaker 1: She's also a best selling author. She spent the last
1:33
Speaker 1: five years creating and pitching TV shows about women in
1:36
Speaker 1: their forties, only to be told that her ideas weren't sexy.
1:40
Speaker 2: She was told nobody would watch them.
1:43
Speaker 1: Her light bulb moment came as she started feeling the
1:45
Speaker 1: impact of paramenopause. She realized she wasn't prepared for it
1:50
Speaker 1: because nobody talks about it.
1:52
Speaker 2: Now.
1:53
Speaker 1: Stacy's a CEO for a company called State of Menopause.
1:56
Speaker 1: She's ready to talk aging, transitions, beauty standard, and.
2:00
Speaker 2: You guessed it, menopause.
2:02
Speaker 1: And she's not here to normalize the conversation, She's here
2:06
Speaker 1: to optimize it. This conversation took so many unexpected turns.
2:12
Speaker 1: She has so much to say and depth of thought
2:16
Speaker 1: on transitions in life and of course aging, but also
2:21
Speaker 1: just humanity. I think you're really gonna like this one.
2:31
Speaker 1: So we have quite a lot to discuss today, fashion, TV, aging, menopause.
2:38
Speaker 1: But before we get into all of that, I need
2:41
Speaker 1: to know where the iconic white streak in your hair
2:44
Speaker 1: came from, because most people wanting to be on TV
2:47
Speaker 1: would have died it and you chose to rocket. Yeah.
2:50
Speaker 3: Well, it's also because I've had the gray streak since
2:52
Speaker 3: I was eleven, so I don't think of it as
2:55
Speaker 3: having anything to do with aging whatsoever. Now my gray
2:58
Speaker 3: streets are coming in and furious. I can't wait till
3:01
Speaker 3: my hair is all gray. But that's because to me,
3:04
Speaker 3: it's just, you know, it's sort of the opposite of
3:08
Speaker 3: having very dark hair, right, So I like that juxtaposition.
3:11
Speaker 3: I like the idea that I went from having like
3:13
Speaker 3: super black hair to now having this kind of salt
3:17
Speaker 3: and pepper to eventually it being gray. I think there
3:20
Speaker 3: is something about that kind of natural evolution and progression
3:24
Speaker 3: that doesn't read to me is like being old. Even
3:27
Speaker 3: when I was, you know, thirty two and I started
3:30
Speaker 3: on what want to wear, I didn't associate it with age,
3:33
Speaker 3: And now that it is actually associated with age at
3:36
Speaker 3: fifty two, I'm so proud of my age, and I'm
3:39
Speaker 3: so proud of the evolution that I've had in the
3:41
Speaker 3: last twenty years that you know, for me having gray
3:44
Speaker 3: streaks is like earning my stripes. It's like I'm living
3:47
Speaker 3: my life. It's the way I feel about wrinkles. It's
3:49
Speaker 3: the way I feel about all of the things that
3:51
Speaker 3: happen to us when we age. We tend to see
3:54
Speaker 3: these things in a negative light because you know, culturally,
3:58
Speaker 3: women are not allowed to age constantly filling our face
4:01
Speaker 3: with things. And I have no judgment around that either.
4:04
Speaker 3: It's just the fact that we feel compelled to not
4:08
Speaker 3: allow ourselves to age naturally that I think is part
4:11
Speaker 3: of the problem. You know, we're robbing ourselves of that experience,
4:15
Speaker 3: and we're robbing our kids and our grandkids the experience
4:18
Speaker 3: of knowing what it's like for you know, women to age.
4:23
Speaker 3: And I think it's a it's a dangerous slippery slope.
4:26
Speaker 3: Let's say, when young kids, you know, don't understand the
4:30
Speaker 3: aging process, Like I really remember my grandparents as my grandparents.
4:34
Speaker 3: I remember my parents when they were young and i'd
4:37
Speaker 3: seen them age. Like all of these things I think
4:39
Speaker 3: are quite important to you know, our cultural and social
4:44
Speaker 3: maturation and the idea that you know, yes, we look
4:47
Speaker 3: younger than we did. You know, when Golden girls were
4:50
Speaker 3: in their fifties, and you know, I joke around that
4:52
Speaker 3: menopause women walk among you, and you probably don't even
4:55
Speaker 3: know it because, like, you know, we're not. Menopause is
4:58
Speaker 3: like so stigmatized and gets such a bad you don't
5:00
Speaker 3: realize that, Like you know, there are so many women
5:03
Speaker 3: who are the head, you know, head breadwinners of their household,
5:07
Speaker 3: incredibly successful at the top of their careers, who are
5:10
Speaker 3: going through this at the same time. And you know,
5:13
Speaker 3: there are two or more things can be true at
5:17
Speaker 3: the same time, and you can be feeling like you're
5:20
Speaker 3: at your best age, or you're at the height of
5:23
Speaker 3: your career or wherever you want to be, but something
5:25
Speaker 3: like menopause can also take you down and make you
5:27
Speaker 3: feel insecure and make you feel like physiologically a little
5:31
Speaker 3: bit off balance in a way, they can be very disturbing.
5:35
Speaker 3: My role, in terms of going back to your original question,
5:39
Speaker 3: is that, like I always wanted to be as much
5:42
Speaker 3: of my authentic self as possible, and television was not
5:46
Speaker 3: on purpose. That was that was by accident, and the
5:48
Speaker 3: fact that I did it for seventeen years, you know,
5:52
Speaker 3: was really just the way it worked out. But I
5:55
Speaker 3: never really thought about my grace streak as some sort
5:57
Speaker 3: of revolution or evolutionary statement. It's just part of who
6:02
Speaker 3: I am. It's like my nose, right, I mean, it's
6:05
Speaker 3: big and it's weird, and I like it that way.
6:07
Speaker 4: Mine is too.
6:08
Speaker 1: But I look at your gray streak and it's become
6:11
Speaker 1: so distinguishing and iconic, Like people recognize it even if
6:15
Speaker 1: they didn't.
6:15
Speaker 4: Watch What Not to where they know your streak.
6:19
Speaker 1: And I just think, especially in TV, you're you're supposed
6:22
Speaker 1: to fit into this box, particularly in two thousand and three,
6:25
Speaker 1: and so I've just I'm kind of taken by the
6:28
Speaker 1: fact that you never were tempted to even touch it.
6:32
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, let's see, I did when I was in magazines.
6:36
Speaker 3: I remember I tinted the gray streak pink and it
6:40
Speaker 3: fell out of my head. So that was one posson learned.
6:43
Speaker 3: I had like a little sprout when I went to
6:45
Speaker 3: like the shows in Paris. It was really unattractive, you know,
6:48
Speaker 3: aside from kind of screwing with my hair a little bit.
6:50
Speaker 3: I didn't know any better in two thousand and two
6:53
Speaker 3: when I got cast in the show, and certainly two
6:55
Speaker 3: thousand and three when it started airing, that I was
6:58
Speaker 3: supposed to fit into any kind of All I'd ever
7:01
Speaker 3: done was behind the camera. All I'd ever done was
7:04
Speaker 3: style people who are in front of the camera. So
7:06
Speaker 3: for me, it really actually took a second to understand
7:10
Speaker 3: the difference in the way I would make somebody look
7:14
Speaker 3: to be in front of the camera and how I
7:16
Speaker 3: wanted myself to look in front of the camera. I mean,
7:19
Speaker 3: those first couple of years of what not to wear,
7:21
Speaker 3: that's some pretty tough style choices I made there, even
7:24
Speaker 3: for two thousand and three. I look back and I cringe,
7:27
Speaker 3: But you know, again, it took me. I was not
7:29
Speaker 3: expecting our show to run for ten years. I was
7:32
Speaker 3: not expecting to be a pant Teene spokesperson, or you know,
7:36
Speaker 3: work on The View or the Today Show, or go
7:38
Speaker 3: on Oprah or any of the amazing, insane things that
7:42
Speaker 3: wound up happening to me doing Nora Ephron's play off Broadway.
7:46
Speaker 3: I mean, just weird, crazy things that I could never
7:49
Speaker 3: have imagined. So I didn't go into it with this
7:51
Speaker 3: kind of preconceived notion of what I was supposed to
7:53
Speaker 3: look like. I mean, people told me to lie about
7:56
Speaker 3: my age. People told me later on that you know,
8:00
Speaker 3: I was lucky that my streak looked kind of iconic.
8:03
Speaker 3: Otherwise they would have told me to diet. I was lucky,
8:06
Speaker 3: you know, in a lot of ways that sort of
8:08
Speaker 3: being naive and knowing what I knew about how to
8:12
Speaker 3: dress other people was really was what was that the
8:15
Speaker 3: forefront of my career and the things about you know,
8:18
Speaker 3: me being a spokesperson or me being the center of
8:21
Speaker 3: attention came much later that that was something that took
8:24
Speaker 3: a little bit of getting used to for me.
8:26
Speaker 1: I want to kind of go back for people that
8:29
Speaker 1: don't know your pre what to wear career. You started
8:32
Speaker 1: an editorial, you were working at Vogue. What do you
8:35
Speaker 1: remember about that time? And I think, you know, so
8:40
Speaker 1: many young women dream about working at Vogue? Is it
8:43
Speaker 1: the way that we would all envision it?
8:46
Speaker 3: I mean it's really hard, right, you know, I won't lie.
8:48
Speaker 3: It was my first job out of college and it
8:51
Speaker 3: was you know, you swim with charts, so you either
8:54
Speaker 3: keep moving or you die. You know, nobody there is
8:57
Speaker 3: given a free pass. It is for me, it was
9:00
Speaker 3: like military training. It was like the word impossible does
9:03
Speaker 3: not exist when it comes to getting things done at Bogue.
9:06
Speaker 3: Anna had only been there for three years when I
9:09
Speaker 3: got there. I had a few different editors as bosses,
9:12
Speaker 3: but one of the ones that I worked for was
9:15
Speaker 3: Andre Leon Talley just passed away, and that was heartbreaking
9:20
Speaker 3: to me because you know, some of my most formative
9:22
Speaker 3: experiences in fashion were with him. I think it really
9:26
Speaker 3: did set me up in a lot of ways for
9:28
Speaker 3: what came after. You know, I left Vogue and I
9:31
Speaker 3: went to a version of Mademoiselle that was very avant
9:35
Speaker 3: garde at the time, right when grunge hit, and then
9:39
Speaker 3: I left that Mademoiselle. I was the assistant to the
9:42
Speaker 3: fashion director at the time, whose name was Debbie Mason,
9:45
Speaker 3: and went freelance and I assisted probably every major stylist
9:52
Speaker 3: or magazine editor that you can think to name at
9:56
Speaker 3: that time, right every single one. And I decided I
9:59
Speaker 3: was either going to be like the world's best first assistant,
10:04
Speaker 3: get a certain amount of money, like almost like on
10:06
Speaker 3: a salary kind of budget, and just stay the world's
10:10
Speaker 3: best assistant, right, you know, like I would just hone
10:13
Speaker 3: that skill. But you know, I had other ambitions, so
10:17
Speaker 3: at a certain point I just stopped taking any work
10:20
Speaker 3: that required me to be the assistant, which, by the way,
10:24
Speaker 3: meant that my dad had to help me pay my
10:25
Speaker 3: rent for six months. But eventually I started to get
10:28
Speaker 3: calls from agents who represented stylists who were away, and
10:33
Speaker 3: they were like, can you fill in, you know, can
10:35
Speaker 3: you do this or can you do that? And it
10:37
Speaker 3: was a wonderful way to kind of get experience in
10:40
Speaker 3: styling myself, you know, both for ad campaigns and for editorial.
10:43
Speaker 3: And then I got asked back when there was a
10:46
Speaker 3: new editor in chief at Mademoiselle to be the senior
10:48
Speaker 3: fashion editor under Evan Metzner, who was the fashion director.
10:52
Speaker 3: And I was there for four years until a new
10:55
Speaker 3: editor in chief came in and I got fired. That
10:58
Speaker 3: was at thirty. And I I don't say this callously,
11:01
Speaker 3: you know. I don't mean to say this for people
11:03
Speaker 3: who are obviously in a position where they need to
11:05
Speaker 3: keep their jobs. But I really do believe that all
11:08
Speaker 3: of us should get fired at some point. It was
11:11
Speaker 3: not quit fired, not quit fired.
11:15
Speaker 4: Why fire is.
11:16
Speaker 3: Because fired requires a different kind of thinking. Right. First
11:20
Speaker 3: of all, if you quit, your ego is im bruised.
11:23
Speaker 3: If you're fired, chances are it will be and that
11:26
Speaker 3: kind of humbling is actually really important as you embark
11:29
Speaker 3: on a larger career. As you embark on any career,
11:32
Speaker 3: being told that you're either not working hard enough, or
11:36
Speaker 3: that you're not the right fit, or whatever it is,
11:39
Speaker 3: whatever would convince somebody that you should be fired is
11:43
Speaker 3: always something to look at. Not that you need to
11:45
Speaker 3: beat yourself up over it, but it really is an
11:48
Speaker 3: opportunity one to see what you need to do in
11:51
Speaker 3: order to be a better version of yourself. And two,
11:55
Speaker 3: when things close, it's only when people say no that
11:59
Speaker 3: you can find the yes. It's only you know. I
12:01
Speaker 3: don't want to say when one door closes, another door opens.
12:04
Speaker 3: It's a little bit less cliche than that for me,
12:06
Speaker 3: and I do think it is really important to not
12:09
Speaker 3: surround yourself with people who are always going to be
12:11
Speaker 3: like you're the best, You're the greatest, diedore you. That's wonderful,
12:15
Speaker 3: but that's also something earned in your career, and there
12:18
Speaker 3: are going to be lots of times where you fall short,
12:20
Speaker 3: and learning those lessons is just as important as you know,
12:24
Speaker 3: what we would deem quote unquote success. I try not
12:27
Speaker 3: to use words like success and failure because I think
12:30
Speaker 3: they're judgment their value judgments on what is essentially all experienced.
12:36
Speaker 3: You're right so you have to take everything you can
12:39
Speaker 3: from experiences and stop thinking of them as good or bad,
12:43
Speaker 3: success or failure, yes or no, and understand that there's
12:47
Speaker 3: always something to learn from wherever you are at any
12:50
Speaker 3: moment that you're alive, that you're interacting with the world.
12:54
Speaker 1: Is there an ego bruise that you remember cutting the
12:57
Speaker 1: most career?
12:59
Speaker 3: I mean, definitely getting fun for me, Alison, And I was, like,
13:02
Speaker 3: that was heartrenching for me. I was devastated. And you know,
13:06
Speaker 3: this editor sort of went out of her way to
13:08
Speaker 3: kind of make me feel terrible about the stories that
13:11
Speaker 3: I had styled. She went through one issue of the
13:13
Speaker 3: magazine in front of the entire staff and like ripped
13:16
Speaker 3: my stories to shreds. And I remember that everybody on
13:20
Speaker 3: the team went out for drinks with her afterwards, like
13:22
Speaker 3: you know, as we were all just getting to know her,
13:24
Speaker 3: and I did not go. And I got on the
13:27
Speaker 3: train and like sobbed my way home. I couldn't stop crying.
13:30
Speaker 3: I was I was so proud of my work. It
13:33
Speaker 3: was painful sort of not to make the cut right
13:35
Speaker 3: of what this new version of the magazine was going
13:38
Speaker 3: to be. However, you know that editor got the magazine closed,
13:44
Speaker 3: so she you know, it shut down because of her.
13:47
Speaker 3: So in retrospect, you know it was probably a good
13:49
Speaker 3: time to get out, but it didn't feel that way
13:51
Speaker 3: at the time. That was an intense ego bruise, of course,
13:55
Speaker 3: but also you stopped thinking about your ego at a
13:59
Speaker 3: certain point. But I think that as we age, we
14:01
Speaker 3: can kind of learn, you know, when egos serves us
14:05
Speaker 3: and when it doesn't, and you know that is that's
14:08
Speaker 3: sort of been the art of aging for me is
14:11
Speaker 3: like really sort of trying to understand myself always in
14:14
Speaker 3: a new life, that there's evolution is always taking place.
14:18
Speaker 3: And if you are stuck in one part of your life,
14:21
Speaker 3: if you think that one part of your life or
14:23
Speaker 3: an age, or a job or relationship defines you, and
14:27
Speaker 3: you find yourself out of that job or out of
14:30
Speaker 3: that relationship or out of that time where you thought
14:32
Speaker 3: you looked your best or whatever, you can't hold on
14:35
Speaker 3: to those things as as anything as anything external, anything
14:41
Speaker 3: external should not define you. Right. The most important thing
14:44
Speaker 3: that I've always thought about my work is that, you know,
14:47
Speaker 3: I am invested in people's sense of self worth. I
14:50
Speaker 3: am invested in people's sense of self esteem, I'm invested
14:54
Speaker 3: in people's sense of self awareness, and that can't come
14:57
Speaker 3: from other people. That is something that you have to
15:00
Speaker 3: build in and of yourself. And I've always tried to
15:03
Speaker 3: be a vehicle to help people see that about themselves.
15:07
Speaker 3: And it was certainly what I did on television when
15:10
Speaker 3: I started shooting What Not to Wear, which was all
15:13
Speaker 3: about transformation and evolution. The show was really never about
15:19
Speaker 3: the clothes. It was about what the clothes could do,
15:21
Speaker 3: and what they could do was sort of help people
15:24
Speaker 3: kind of find their own sense of self, their own
15:27
Speaker 3: sense of self esteem, their own sense of self awareness
15:30
Speaker 3: in a way that kind of allowed them to walk
15:32
Speaker 3: away from the show and walk through the world in
15:35
Speaker 3: a new way. It was the stories that happened after
15:38
Speaker 3: that were most interesting, Like people met the love of
15:41
Speaker 3: their lives, people left bad marriages, people got their dream
15:45
Speaker 3: job because they left with a different kind of confidence.
15:49
Speaker 3: If I can do this, if all it takes is
15:52
Speaker 3: to kind of change the way my body looks and clothed,
15:55
Speaker 3: if I wear different colors. If I can do that
15:58
Speaker 3: and it's that easy, else can I do that? I
16:01
Speaker 3: could change my life.
16:02
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated to hear you say this because one of
16:05
Speaker 1: my questions for you is I've followed you for a
16:07
Speaker 1: long time and you have so much depth, and you
16:10
Speaker 1: really care about cultural like you want to push the
16:14
Speaker 1: culture ball forward. Yes, and so you simultaneously have this
16:18
Speaker 1: love for fashion and aesthetics and I'm wondering how you
16:23
Speaker 1: sort of marry the two. But I think you've just
16:25
Speaker 1: answered my question. It's that one is a mirror.
16:28
Speaker 2: To the other.
16:29
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it was really going through this emotional journey. So
16:34
Speaker 3: we knew that it was going to be entertaining. That's
16:36
Speaker 3: what the show was meant to do. We did not
16:37
Speaker 3: realize that people were going to get so much education
16:41
Speaker 3: from us that they started using our rules to shop by.
16:44
Speaker 3: But really what nobody expected was that it was going
16:47
Speaker 3: to have this kind of emotional pull.
16:49
Speaker 1: I want to go back to one thing you said.
16:52
Speaker 1: You said you've always tried to help people with their
16:55
Speaker 1: self confidence, and I've always like, for me, what I
17:00
Speaker 1: really want to do is to help people feel seen.
17:04
Speaker 1: And my therapist said to me, usually we give what
17:07
Speaker 1: we most need, which sort of no question.
17:11
Speaker 3: Well, we teach what we need to learn.
17:13
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, So do you feel like you've been constantly
17:18
Speaker 1: working on your own self confidence.
17:19
Speaker 4: Is that where that's coming from?
17:21
Speaker 3: No question? I mean I think you know, look I say,
17:24
Speaker 3: I've talked about this a lot. I've talked about this
17:25
Speaker 3: in my book, The Truth about Style. I went into
17:28
Speaker 3: the fashion industry because I was deeply insecure, and it
17:33
Speaker 3: is an industry built on insecurity. You have to have
17:35
Speaker 3: the latest thing to be cool. You constantly have to
17:38
Speaker 3: keep up with trends like I want it in, I
17:41
Speaker 3: want it into that world. Because I felt like that
17:43
Speaker 3: would validate me, that I would be cool, that I
17:46
Speaker 3: would be you know, working at Vogue and going into
17:48
Speaker 3: fashion as my first job, I was like, it doesn't
17:50
Speaker 3: get better than this. But you know, I quickly realized
17:54
Speaker 3: that is essentially external validation that doesn't have anything to
17:58
Speaker 3: do with who you are as a person. And I
18:00
Speaker 3: spent a lot of my life beating myself up for
18:03
Speaker 3: everything that I wasn't, everything that I didn't feel like,
18:07
Speaker 3: you know, everybody else had easy. But when I started
18:11
Speaker 3: working on one Onto Wear, I started to meet a
18:14
Speaker 3: lot of people who had the same kind of negative
18:17
Speaker 3: language loop going on in their head all the time.
18:20
Speaker 3: And you know, I guess that kind of critical nature
18:24
Speaker 3: is what made me good for the show when we
18:26
Speaker 3: started off being kind of snarky, But what I realized
18:29
Speaker 3: was that I was talking to people and watching them
18:32
Speaker 3: beat themselves up in the way that they would talk
18:35
Speaker 3: about themselves, and I just wouldn't stand for it. I
18:38
Speaker 3: was like, this is unacceptable. I had so much compassion
18:41
Speaker 3: for how amazing almost every contributor was on the show
18:45
Speaker 3: that we had, and I thought, I'm being compassionate with them.
18:48
Speaker 3: Why am I being so hard on myself? And truly,
18:52
Speaker 3: the show taught me how to have self compassion, it
18:55
Speaker 3: really did, because you can't feel for others. You can't
18:59
Speaker 3: say that you want somebody to feel seen if you're
19:02
Speaker 3: not willing to do the work for yourself as well.
19:04
Speaker 3: You know, you can't be a conduit to helping out
19:08
Speaker 3: their people if what you are looking to get out
19:11
Speaker 3: of it isn't actually genuine, right, So of course you
19:15
Speaker 3: have to be involved in the same kind of process
19:18
Speaker 3: as what you want to help other people with. We
19:20
Speaker 3: are always evolving and so we're always going to see
19:24
Speaker 3: ourselves from a different perspective, but the idea is to
19:27
Speaker 3: engage on that level with other people. So when you
19:29
Speaker 3: say that you want people to be seen, well, then
19:33
Speaker 3: It's essential that you work on the way you want
19:35
Speaker 3: to be seen, Otherwise it comes from a disingenuous place.
19:39
Speaker 3: And that's why I think, you know, if you're if
19:42
Speaker 3: you're in the trenches trying to help people, then you're
19:45
Speaker 3: in the trenches with them. You're doing the same work
19:47
Speaker 3: that they're doing, and you're helping to facilitate that, you know.
19:50
Speaker 3: I think that's why people like Glennon Doyle or Rene
19:53
Speaker 3: Brown are so incredibly important in the way that we
19:57
Speaker 3: start to look at our culture now. Leave Azayi is
20:00
Speaker 3: another person who I think really gets out there to
20:03
Speaker 3: talk to people from a place of what they've learned
20:06
Speaker 3: or what they continue to struggle with, what their challenges are,
20:09
Speaker 3: and make it more relatable and a lot easier for
20:13
Speaker 3: people to share themselves with each other on an honest level,
20:17
Speaker 3: not sort of a performative one.
20:19
Speaker 1: It interesting you bring up those three people. I read
20:21
Speaker 1: an article about how Millennials are the least religious group
20:26
Speaker 1: in six decades, and some of those cultural leaders have
20:31
Speaker 1: become our religious leaders in some ways.
20:34
Speaker 4: Particularly, I think that's true. Yeah, I felt like I
20:37
Speaker 4: think that's true.
20:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it doesn't surprise me, you know, in
20:42
Speaker 3: some ways. I think it doesn't really matter whether it's
20:45
Speaker 3: religion or who you're following for inspiration, But I do
20:49
Speaker 3: think it's extremely important to have faith in something. They
20:52
Speaker 3: do think that it's really important to kind of believe
20:55
Speaker 3: in something bigger than yourself, because then we're not the gods,
20:59
Speaker 3: right where the gods, then we're sort of worshiping false idols.
21:03
Speaker 3: But I think instructors people who are going through the
21:06
Speaker 3: work themselves, doing the work themselves, sharing that work with
21:09
Speaker 3: others is the greatest way to create connection between people, right,
21:14
Speaker 3: And so you know, I don't think we're like our
21:17
Speaker 3: worship of Glenin or Brene or Lovey or even Oprah
21:20
Speaker 3: is sort of worshiping false idols. I think it's their
21:24
Speaker 3: transparency and their struggles that have allowed us to be
21:28
Speaker 3: more honest with ourselves and honest with each other less ashamed.
21:32
Speaker 3: Women in particular, I think, really deal with a lot
21:35
Speaker 3: of internalized shame. And we are finding people in society
21:40
Speaker 3: who are sort of speaking to our hearts in a
21:42
Speaker 3: different way. And so it may not be religion as
21:45
Speaker 3: we know it. It certainly may not be religion at all,
21:48
Speaker 3: but I certainly think it has to do with faith
21:51
Speaker 3: with faith in something that is bigger than us, and
21:54
Speaker 3: faith in the people that resonate with us.
22:00
Speaker 1: Several years ago, I tried to swap out as many
22:02
Speaker 1: of my products as possible for clean duplicates. I transitioned
22:07
Speaker 1: my cleaning supplies, detergent and skincare, and that's when I
22:11
Speaker 1: found Origins. Since nineteen ninety Origins has been the pioneer
22:15
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22:19
Speaker 1: science and skin biology. So what does that mean. Well, basically,
22:24
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22:26
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22:29
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22:33
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Speaker 1: origins dot com. So as I was researching for this interview,
22:48
Speaker 1: I do deep research for every interview.
22:51
Speaker 3: I'm impressed, thank you.
22:53
Speaker 1: But you have some of the best articles and headlines
22:57
Speaker 1: I've ever read. I know if you're writing the headlines
23:01
Speaker 1: or if you're because you work like you know how
23:04
Speaker 1: it goes, because you worked an editorial.
23:06
Speaker 4: But they are so catchy and so interesting and you're
23:09
Speaker 4: so honest to me, I put you in that group.
23:12
Speaker 4: You're one of our cultural leaders.
23:14
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Wow, that's a huge compliment. I'm very plattered.
23:19
Speaker 1: So some of my questions from here on out, I'm
23:21
Speaker 1: going to preface with these amazing headlines. So I read,
23:25
Speaker 1: your show had a ten year run, you gain national recognition,
23:29
Speaker 1: And then the headline read America longed for Stacy London
23:32
Speaker 1: to insult our clothes, which is so wonderful.
23:36
Speaker 3: I've never even heard that, but it's true.
23:41
Speaker 4: We were all dying for you.
23:43
Speaker 1: To come clean out our closet and tell us what
23:45
Speaker 1: we were doing wrong.
23:46
Speaker 3: You know, listen, I still get that. I even now,
23:49
Speaker 3: I still get people on the street are like, rippeyat
23:51
Speaker 3: to shreds, what do you hate about what I'm wearing?
23:53
Speaker 3: Which you know, I found very just concerning for a
23:55
Speaker 3: little while, especially when you know, the show was just
23:58
Speaker 3: getting started and we were starting to kind of gain popularity,
24:01
Speaker 3: and I realized that people were starting to notice me
24:04
Speaker 3: on the street and I would look at them and
24:06
Speaker 3: be like, do we go to high school together? College?
24:08
Speaker 3: Like how do I know you? You know, it took me
24:11
Speaker 3: a second to understand what was happening in the zeitgeist.
24:14
Speaker 3: But I do think that is one of the greatest
24:16
Speaker 3: titles I have ever heard. And I don't even know
24:18
Speaker 3: what article that's from.
24:19
Speaker 4: It's so good I'll send it to you.
24:22
Speaker 1: Okay, next headline, the What Not to Wear a host
24:24
Speaker 1: isn't on TV anymore or in fashion or dating men.
24:28
Speaker 4: So made some changes in your life?
24:31
Speaker 3: It changes? Yeah, not in fashion. Not well, I'll always
24:35
Speaker 3: be in style, right, I mean not me personally that
24:39
Speaker 3: I'll always be in sell. But I don't think of
24:42
Speaker 3: fashion is what I did, right. I think that it's
24:45
Speaker 3: what I said in my book. Fashion is the industry
24:47
Speaker 3: that makes you feel insecure. Style is what you claim
24:51
Speaker 3: as yours. That is personal, that has nothing to do
24:54
Speaker 3: with the industry, nothing to do with trends, but everything
24:56
Speaker 3: to do with what you want to say about yourself.
24:59
Speaker 3: And that's a much more proactive, empowering place to approach
25:04
Speaker 3: clothing from or anything that you do, or your interiors
25:08
Speaker 3: or what you eat or you know where you go
25:10
Speaker 3: to eat, or who your friends are. It's all part
25:12
Speaker 3: of the same thing. It's like Capital life, lowercase style.
25:15
Speaker 3: But I love that, so I guess I can't even
25:20
Speaker 3: remember what the things were I'm not in passion, I'm not.
25:23
Speaker 4: What she isn't on TV anymore or on TV or
25:26
Speaker 4: dating men.
25:28
Speaker 3: So I still do some television, to be fair, I
25:31
Speaker 3: just don't have my own show anymore. And yeah, I'm
25:33
Speaker 3: not in passion, and yeah I stopped dating men. That
25:36
Speaker 3: is true. I didn't plan on any of those things,
25:40
Speaker 3: just the way I didn't plan on being on in
25:42
Speaker 3: television in the first place. But you know, when people
25:45
Speaker 3: make a lot of people make sort of a big
25:47
Speaker 3: deal about the fact that I started dating cat after
25:51
Speaker 3: you know, dating men my most of my life, all
25:53
Speaker 3: of my life. But I don't actually find that to
25:56
Speaker 3: be so revolutionary. And I feel that that's because, you know,
26:00
Speaker 3: I look at younger generations who are like dismantling the
26:04
Speaker 3: idea of gender, of sexuality, of race, of all of
26:07
Speaker 3: these things that I learned from my family and my
26:11
Speaker 3: parents and my grandparents and their grandparents and whatever, which
26:14
Speaker 3: was all like much more secretive, right, and much more
26:18
Speaker 3: you know, we had all of these rules that younger generations,
26:21
Speaker 3: especially like gen Z, are like, why do we have
26:23
Speaker 3: to have those rules?
26:24
Speaker 4: Let's just so comfortable with impermanence.
26:26
Speaker 1: And I think so many people are so attached to
26:30
Speaker 1: consistency and certainty, and I'm just I'm wondering where that's
26:37
Speaker 1: coming from.
26:37
Speaker 3: It's so rare, you know, I really appreciate that because
26:40
Speaker 3: I actually think that's an incredible insight. I think that
26:44
Speaker 3: you have to get to the place where you can't
26:46
Speaker 3: keep things the same, like that has to happen for you,
26:49
Speaker 3: however it happens for you, And how it happened for
26:51
Speaker 3: me is that, you know, I stopped getting asked to
26:53
Speaker 3: be on television all the time, which you know, was
26:56
Speaker 3: humbling and a certain sort of reckoning for myself, but
27:00
Speaker 3: also that I started to feel different. You know, I
27:03
Speaker 3: didn't look the same. I pretty much looked the same
27:05
Speaker 3: from like, you know, thirty to forty seven, and then
27:09
Speaker 3: I started to see things change. I started to feel different.
27:13
Speaker 3: I started to kind of mourn this idea of my youth,
27:16
Speaker 3: and certainly the physiology, even though I never wanted children,
27:20
Speaker 3: not being able to have them anymore after menopause, there's
27:23
Speaker 3: kind of a secondary grief involved in that, And I thought,
27:26
Speaker 3: you know, you can stay here, you can sit here
27:29
Speaker 3: and be sad about what you aren't any longer, or
27:33
Speaker 3: you can take what is you know, essentially the experience
27:37
Speaker 3: and the stages of menopause, and really think about what
27:41
Speaker 3: that's buying you. And I really truly believe because we
27:44
Speaker 3: don't talk about certainly anybody with female reproductive organs, right,
27:49
Speaker 3: We don't talk about the lifespan of their hormonal health.
27:51
Speaker 3: We don't talk about things after a pregnancy, postpartum, even infertility. Right.
27:56
Speaker 3: We talk about infertility now way more than we did
27:58
Speaker 3: five years ago. Menopause is still shrouded in secrecy and darkness,
28:04
Speaker 3: and I like nothing better than to bring a flashlight
28:06
Speaker 3: when it starts. So for me, when I started to experience,
28:10
Speaker 3: you know, the kind of grief about losing my youth
28:14
Speaker 3: or not being able to have children anymore or things
28:16
Speaker 3: like that, I was like, I can wallow in this,
28:19
Speaker 3: or I can start to look at menopause in a
28:21
Speaker 3: different way, which now I really truly believe it is
28:25
Speaker 3: a biological fail safe that you must experience in the
28:29
Speaker 3: middle of your life in order to take a pause
28:33
Speaker 3: and actually reassess. Because we don't live linear lives anymore,
28:36
Speaker 3: and we're not dying at fifty or sixty, we're dying
28:39
Speaker 3: at ninety. That's a lot more time for you to evolve,
28:43
Speaker 3: for you to have different experiences, for you to have
28:45
Speaker 3: a different life. And without this moment of like both
28:50
Speaker 3: physiological psychological emotional change, then you don't really get to
28:56
Speaker 3: understand what to look forward to, right, are always kind
29:00
Speaker 3: of stuck looking back. I very strangely went through my
29:03
Speaker 3: closet recently, and I had all these clothes that I'm like,
29:07
Speaker 3: why don't I wear that? You know, why don't I?
29:09
Speaker 3: Why don't I wear that? I have so many clothes,
29:12
Speaker 3: like why don't I wear those pants? Why don't I
29:14
Speaker 3: do that? And I put them on and I realized
29:16
Speaker 3: the only reason that I was holding onto them was
29:18
Speaker 3: because I wore them once and they looked great on me,
29:21
Speaker 3: or I have a picture where I looked great in them,
29:23
Speaker 3: and now they don't really suit me. So we have
29:26
Speaker 3: this tendency, even in the way that we dress, that
29:29
Speaker 3: we hold on to where we were frozen in time
29:32
Speaker 3: when we felt the best, right when we felt like
29:35
Speaker 3: we were at sort of the zenith of our career
29:38
Speaker 3: or our looks or whatever that is. And this inability
29:43
Speaker 3: to accept ourselves in any other way than sort of
29:46
Speaker 3: the best time that we felt the best, It really
29:49
Speaker 3: doesn't reflect human experience, and it certainly doesn't reflect what
29:54
Speaker 3: we're able to experience if we let go of what
29:57
Speaker 3: was except what is and look forward to what coming.
30:00
Speaker 3: And that's a very different mindset. It's a different mindset
30:03
Speaker 3: that does say, yes, everything is. You know, there is
30:08
Speaker 3: no permanence in the world. And I guess you know
30:11
Speaker 3: on some level that scares people because what that really
30:14
Speaker 3: is talking about is your immortality. And to me, it's
30:18
Speaker 3: just why are we worrying about dying if we're not
30:21
Speaker 3: actually engaged in living. And this idea that menopause, you know,
30:26
Speaker 3: we're somehow past our expiration dates, that if we're no
30:29
Speaker 3: longer fertile, we no longer have any use value is
30:33
Speaker 3: like archaic. It's like caveman, you know, sociobiology. But the
30:38
Speaker 3: fact is, women in general, and those who identify as women,
30:43
Speaker 3: and those who don't identify as women, who are female
30:45
Speaker 3: reproductive organs, all of us are have moved so far
30:51
Speaker 3: past our biological use value in society that it's really
30:56
Speaker 3: important we start looking at the biology that we can't escape.
31:00
Speaker 3: So we do have to take a new approach to aging,
31:03
Speaker 3: and we do have to take a new approach to menopause.
31:05
Speaker 3: We do have to take a new approach to approach
31:07
Speaker 3: to what a full lifespan looks like. And you know,
31:11
Speaker 3: I just want to go back to the fact that
31:12
Speaker 3: you were saying, you know, people don't know that I'm
31:14
Speaker 3: so deep right. For me, my experience through menopause has
31:20
Speaker 3: been extraordinarily difficult. I could not go on hormones like
31:24
Speaker 3: a lot of my friends. I have autoimmune diseases and
31:27
Speaker 3: the health history that makes that impossible for me. And so,
31:30
Speaker 3: you know, I started off as a beta tester for
31:34
Speaker 3: the company that I now run.
31:36
Speaker 4: I have another headline for you.
31:38
Speaker 1: Networks execs told Stacy London no one would watch her
31:41
Speaker 1: own sexy show. So you were pitching shows about women
31:45
Speaker 1: in their forties, you were being turned down. I looked
31:49
Speaker 1: up some statistics recently because I've been watching Sex in
31:53
Speaker 1: the City the Rebooth, and women take up thirty eight
31:57
Speaker 1: percent of screen time on TV. Women over fifty have
32:02
Speaker 1: only eight percent of screen time and they're twenty percent
32:05
Speaker 1: of the population, so they're not seeing themselves on TV
32:10
Speaker 1: almost entirely. Yeah, what do you think that roadblock was
32:16
Speaker 1: for you to sell those shows?
32:18
Speaker 4: And now still to this.
32:20
Speaker 1: Day, I think like agism is the only ism that
32:23
Speaker 1: is sort of accepted.
32:24
Speaker 3: We're still in this and agism is still sexism. Right,
32:27
Speaker 3: Let's just be clear, like there is no agism for men, right,
32:31
Speaker 3: maybe I mean think about that. Right, as far as
32:34
Speaker 3: I'm concerned, agism is sexism. And when people talk about
32:37
Speaker 3: gendered agism, I don't know what they mean. I mean,
32:40
Speaker 3: we have a president who is eighty one years old. Okay,
32:43
Speaker 3: we forget about having a female president who's like in
32:46
Speaker 3: her fifties, Like we are men don't men are allowed
32:50
Speaker 3: to age and continue to I mean, look at George Clooney, right,
32:55
Speaker 3: any of George Clooney, any woman George Clooney's age is
32:58
Speaker 3: not getting the kind of money or opportunities that he is, right,
33:02
Speaker 3: especially in entertainment. Forget about, you know, tequila companies whatever.
33:06
Speaker 3: But what I think is really essential, and what I
33:09
Speaker 3: was trying to pitch, was that there is an actual
33:13
Speaker 3: desire to see women in middle age create something other
33:17
Speaker 3: than a crisis for themselves, to maybe start with a
33:20
Speaker 3: crisis but end up having a midlife renaissance, helping people,
33:24
Speaker 3: and women in particular and those who identify as women
33:28
Speaker 3: find that sense of power that we should have in
33:32
Speaker 3: middle ages. Instead of being you know, told that we're
33:36
Speaker 3: irrelevant and that we're you know, invisible. The whole thing
33:40
Speaker 3: is that, at the same time that we are aging,
33:44
Speaker 3: and this is starting to happen to us culturally, that
33:46
Speaker 3: we're being told that we don't matter, we get hit
33:48
Speaker 3: with menopause, which is like the physical reaffirmation that we
33:52
Speaker 3: don't matter. Right. You know, when you start to feel
33:54
Speaker 3: terrible about yourself, you start not everybody. I don't want
33:57
Speaker 3: to I don't want to generalize, but certainly that was
33:59
Speaker 3: my experience. I started to feel it wasn't just that
34:01
Speaker 3: I was, you know, not on television. I don't think
34:04
Speaker 3: you need to leave a television show to feel like
34:07
Speaker 3: you're not who you were, and that everything kind of
34:10
Speaker 3: culturally reaffirms that idea. And the more you have menopausal
34:15
Speaker 3: symptoms that you know, make you feel so out of sorts,
34:19
Speaker 3: it's like a one two punch. And what I was
34:21
Speaker 3: trying to do was to create an unscripted show that
34:24
Speaker 3: was part transformational and part just like, let's dig in
34:28
Speaker 3: to what women my age have to offer the world, right,
34:33
Speaker 3: and the reason you're not seeing a ton of women
34:36
Speaker 3: my age watching television is because there's nothing for them, right,
34:41
Speaker 3: and that is part of the issue. That's what was
34:43
Speaker 3: so frustrating to me and I every room, every room
34:47
Speaker 3: I pitched, even with the component that there'll be a
34:49
Speaker 3: multi generational aspect to this, where somebody whose gen X
34:53
Speaker 3: could teach somebody who's gen Z had to manage a
34:56
Speaker 3: broken heart for the first time, and gen Z who's
34:58
Speaker 3: so completely open and honest about sexuality or gender or
35:03
Speaker 3: race or even being so digitally native, could help teach
35:06
Speaker 3: a gen X or how to kind of be more
35:09
Speaker 3: open and honest. I wanted that kind of collaboration and
35:12
Speaker 3: multi generational influence, and I just got dead stares, dead
35:18
Speaker 3: eyes and crickets in the room, and I thought, Okay,
35:22
Speaker 3: there's definitely something wrong here. If this isn't going to
35:26
Speaker 3: work on television, which is the medium that I know
35:28
Speaker 3: how to work in now and I've spent the last
35:30
Speaker 3: fifteen years working in, it means that I'm going to
35:33
Speaker 3: have to find another way to get to this audience
35:38
Speaker 3: in a way that it still feels that it can
35:40
Speaker 3: be helpful and impactful and also deal with this kind
35:44
Speaker 3: of identity theft that aging can kind of bring on
35:49
Speaker 3: and how to kind of recenter yourself. You know, the
35:51
Speaker 3: two things that I felt when I started to go
35:54
Speaker 3: through menopause was this loss of identity. I didn't look
35:56
Speaker 3: like myself, I didn't feel like myself. And the second
35:58
Speaker 3: thing was a loss of agents. I didn't know what
36:01
Speaker 3: to do about it. I didn't know there was any
36:03
Speaker 3: place to get information. I didn't know who to ask.
36:05
Speaker 3: My doctor said, don't worry, it's menopause. You'll get through it.
36:08
Speaker 3: My gynecologist said use it or lose it, which I
36:11
Speaker 3: was like, what does that mean? And you know, I
36:14
Speaker 3: went to her saying, like, sex is painful and my
36:17
Speaker 3: libido is so low. But if a man did that,
36:20
Speaker 3: he would go and get biagra. Now for you know,
36:24
Speaker 3: the two symptoms that are kind of considered the major
36:27
Speaker 3: ones in quote unquote andropause for men, it's erectile dysfunction
36:32
Speaker 3: and hair loss, and those are billion dollar industries. For men,
36:37
Speaker 3: women in the same age are experiencing upwards the thirty
36:40
Speaker 3: four common symptoms in menopause, and there is less than
36:44
Speaker 3: twenty million dollars in funding for it.
36:47
Speaker 4: Okay, So I love that your personal journey led you
36:50
Speaker 4: to your new role, But you talked about the basically
36:54
Speaker 4: ignored group of women from forty to seventy plus.
36:58
Speaker 3: Forty yeah, forty to six, well, forty to seventy. I
37:02
Speaker 3: feel like, look after seventy, there's this new thing. You know.
37:06
Speaker 3: This is like I don't want to fetishize it, but
37:09
Speaker 3: I think that people tend to see, you know, older
37:13
Speaker 3: women who are much older as being really cute and sweet.
37:17
Speaker 3: And if they're you know, married or they have a
37:19
Speaker 3: significant other, it's like, how cute is it to be
37:21
Speaker 3: old sitting on a bench holding hands. But nobody wants
37:24
Speaker 3: to age, and there is this kind of black hole
37:28
Speaker 3: both in entertainment and in politics in media where women
37:35
Speaker 3: you know, kind of forty to sixty five disappear. They
37:39
Speaker 3: just disappear. And for me it wasn't until I got
37:43
Speaker 3: here that I realized, like, we have to do something
37:46
Speaker 3: about this. I mean, there's legitimacy in us at every age,
37:51
Speaker 3: and the fact that we're not taking advantage of all
37:53
Speaker 3: the knowledge that we have as we age is really
37:57
Speaker 3: devastating to me.
37:59
Speaker 1: So when you say, like, there are women you made
38:01
Speaker 1: a funny joke about there are women among us walking
38:04
Speaker 1: through that house, we just don't know.
38:06
Speaker 4: I think about and you also mentioned the Golden.
38:09
Speaker 1: Girls, like I see, I don't mean to like focus
38:12
Speaker 1: on her, but I think of j Lo and I.
38:15
Speaker 3: I mean, well, that meme was Rue McClanahan, you know,
38:18
Speaker 3: was fifty, and then you had j Loo on a pole,
38:22
Speaker 3: you know, like dancing her heart out in that the
38:24
Speaker 3: Super Bowl. This is fifty. I'm like, yeah, that's a
38:28
Speaker 3: big difference, you know, forty years is a big difference
38:30
Speaker 3: in the way we perceived fifty. We are healthier, we
38:33
Speaker 3: are wealthier, we know much more about like diet, exercise,
38:37
Speaker 3: all the things that would make it easier for us
38:39
Speaker 3: to live longer lives. But that's my point. In the eighties,
38:43
Speaker 3: by the time you were, you know, in your late fifties,
38:45
Speaker 3: you might have retired to Florida to hang out with like,
38:48
Speaker 3: you know people until you died. That is no longer
38:52
Speaker 3: what our lives look like. And certainly the longer our lifespans,
38:56
Speaker 3: the less we can consider this time in our lives
38:59
Speaker 3: the end. It is a new beginning, it is a
39:02
Speaker 3: new chapter, and it has to be treated as an
39:04
Speaker 3: opportunity and we have to stop looking at it. So,
39:08
Speaker 3: you know, from such a place of despair.
39:12
Speaker 1: So I read that on average, women start natural menopause
39:15
Speaker 1: at around fifty one. But until I was researching for
39:19
Speaker 1: this interview, I'd never even heard of perimenopause.
39:22
Speaker 3: Oh my god. See this is what I mean. I mean,
39:24
Speaker 3: you are exactly you know, my target in terms of education,
39:28
Speaker 3: so that you know by the time you get here,
39:32
Speaker 3: it will be a no brainer for you to know
39:34
Speaker 3: what products to buy, what doctors to see, how to
39:36
Speaker 3: manage this if you don't want to see doctors, because
39:38
Speaker 3: you never have to see a medical doctor during menopause ps. Right,
39:42
Speaker 3: but even before Perry is premenopause, and that can start
39:45
Speaker 3: as early as thirty nine, and you can spend one
39:48
Speaker 3: third to one half of your life in a menopausal stage. Right,
39:54
Speaker 3: and even after your postmenopausal you can still have symptoms
39:58
Speaker 3: that you had in perimenopause are called bassomotor symptoms. And
40:01
Speaker 3: those are the things that everybody talks about, right, the
40:04
Speaker 3: night sweats, the hot flashes, the brain fogged me and samnia,
40:08
Speaker 3: the food rashes, you know, the skin rashes, the food allergies.
40:12
Speaker 3: I mean, it goes on and on and on and
40:13
Speaker 3: on and on. Joint pain, muscle fatigue, breast tenderness, burning mouth,
40:17
Speaker 3: tingling extremities. I mean, after a while, when you start
40:21
Speaker 3: to experience all of these things at once, it's very
40:23
Speaker 3: hard to maintain this kind of outward sense of calm
40:28
Speaker 3: and composure, you know. I mean, I have hot flashes
40:30
Speaker 3: in the middle of meetings. I'm so mortified, like I'm
40:33
Speaker 3: wiping myself with a towel. You know, there are things
40:37
Speaker 3: about menopause that do make it more difficult to exist
40:39
Speaker 3: in the world in the same way that you did before.
40:42
Speaker 3: But the fact that nobody knows about that is to me,
40:45
Speaker 3: not knowing about the experience makes the experience that much
40:48
Speaker 3: worse when you get there. If you know about an experience,
40:51
Speaker 3: it in your knowledge will impact your ability to manage
40:55
Speaker 3: and control it. And that's what's being lost in menopause
40:59
Speaker 3: right now. I mean, to be fair, a lot is happening,
41:02
Speaker 3: Like the last two years, a lot of exciting companies
41:05
Speaker 3: are really coming to the fore. I think we're also
41:06
Speaker 3: going to see a lot in tech when it comes
41:09
Speaker 3: to you know, hormonal health and learning more about menopause
41:13
Speaker 3: as just a general phase of life.
41:16
Speaker 1: I want to get to what you're doing now, So
41:20
Speaker 1: New Headlines Stacy London trades in youth and fame for
41:22
Speaker 1: the hottest version of herself. At fifty two, he became
41:26
Speaker 1: the founder and CEO of State of Menopause, which is
41:30
Speaker 1: a holistic product line for women which addresses all the
41:33
Speaker 1: symptoms that you just discussed with menopause, paramenopause, and now
41:37
Speaker 1: I learned premenopause. Yes, so I want to know why
41:43
Speaker 1: you're starting this revolution, because I think it is a revolution.
41:46
Speaker 3: I do disagree, And you know, I think it wasn't
41:49
Speaker 3: a question of like leaving television or fame or any
41:53
Speaker 3: of those things. I had stopped feeling really after pitching
41:56
Speaker 3: my idea of sort of midlife transformation, I was like,
42:00
Speaker 3: I'm pretty much done with television, and I don't know
42:02
Speaker 3: whether it's because I've aged out of television or television
42:05
Speaker 3: has aged out of me, and that it's no longer
42:08
Speaker 3: the medium by which I can affect the most kind
42:11
Speaker 3: of change in our cultural conversation. And I started to
42:16
Speaker 3: think about menopause. I spent five years trying to write
42:19
Speaker 3: a book about aging, and something kept tripping me up.
42:22
Speaker 3: I couldn't do it. I really couldn't do it, and
42:24
Speaker 3: I couldn't figure out why. Part of it was that
42:27
Speaker 3: I was already experiencing that kind of internalized shame. Part
42:31
Speaker 3: of it was that I was changing physically. You know,
42:33
Speaker 3: my body weight was sort of redistributed. I've had a
42:36
Speaker 3: plat tummy my whole life, and now I've got a belly.
42:38
Speaker 3: You know, things that are natural to the aging and
42:41
Speaker 3: menopausal experience. And of course you can you work out,
42:45
Speaker 3: and you can lose weight. And by the way, strength
42:47
Speaker 3: training is essential premenopause and certainly during menopause. You want
42:50
Speaker 3: to protect your bone health, you want to protect your
42:53
Speaker 3: cognitive health, you want to protect your heart health. These
42:55
Speaker 3: are all things that if we talk about them, you
42:59
Speaker 3: can prepare for them, and when you're there, then you
43:01
Speaker 3: know how to take care of yourself for the next
43:03
Speaker 3: forty years. So for me, I realized that menopause had
43:07
Speaker 3: created an existential crisis in aging for me. And it
43:11
Speaker 3: wasn't just about aging. It was about the way that
43:13
Speaker 3: I felt and the way that I felt lost, and
43:15
Speaker 3: the way that I didn't know how to take care
43:17
Speaker 3: of myself. And I thought, that's what needs focus, that's
43:21
Speaker 3: what needs addressing. It is something we don't talk about
43:24
Speaker 3: because of the stigma around it, the internalized shame of
43:27
Speaker 3: the people experiencing it, and I think gen X is
43:30
Speaker 3: the last generation that we'll have that kind of shame,
43:33
Speaker 3: and I want to be part of the reason that
43:35
Speaker 3: that is so. So for me, it's really not a
43:39
Speaker 3: big lead to go from style to wellness because I'm
43:42
Speaker 3: concerned with the same things. If you, you know, I
43:45
Speaker 3: used to say, if you don't look good, you can't
43:46
Speaker 3: feel good. But if you don't feel good, you certainly
43:49
Speaker 3: won't look good. And so it is very important that
43:52
Speaker 3: we are not just talking about how you dress, you know,
43:56
Speaker 3: as you age. I think that is still important, but
43:58
Speaker 3: I think really menopause poses a lot of different issues
44:03
Speaker 3: that we have to kind of, you know, pull apart
44:07
Speaker 3: and individuate and then really be able to educate people
44:10
Speaker 3: about so that they are much more prepared for this
44:13
Speaker 3: stage of life, which I think will also allow us
44:16
Speaker 3: to enjoy this stage of life even more. And you know,
44:20
Speaker 3: it's not like I'm going to tell you if that
44:21
Speaker 3: sweater looks shitty on you, I still will But it
44:24
Speaker 3: really for me is much more about what is an
44:27
Speaker 3: empowering experience? How did we empower people on what not
44:30
Speaker 3: to wear? How can I empower people now? And that's
44:33
Speaker 3: really what I'm trying to do.
44:35
Speaker 1: The few quick rapid fires before you leave me. Okay,
44:38
Speaker 1: I have a card deck of fifty two questions. Tell
44:40
Speaker 1: me when to stop.
44:42
Speaker 3: Stop.
44:42
Speaker 4: It's the best thing you ever quit.
44:44
Speaker 3: I guess, gluten Darien soy as.
44:48
Speaker 4: What is a book that has changed your life? Oh?
44:51
Speaker 3: God, there's so many. I would say probably Meditations by
44:55
Speaker 3: Marcus Aurelius and.
44:57
Speaker 1: The smartest decision You've ever made dating at Stacy. One
45:02
Speaker 1: of the pillars of this interview series was that I
45:05
Speaker 1: stand on the shoulders of women who have done so
45:08
Speaker 1: much work before me, and you have huge shoulders.
45:12
Speaker 3: I think so much.
45:14
Speaker 4: I thank you.
45:15
Speaker 3: I'm just so honored. Well, you know what, we're just
45:18
Speaker 3: getting started. So we have to get back together at
45:21
Speaker 3: least in like six months or a year, and I
45:24
Speaker 3: can tell you more about this journey because it's really
45:27
Speaker 3: just getting going. And I feel like the conversation even
45:30
Speaker 3: six months from now is going to be a different one.
45:32
Speaker 3: So I hope we can do this again.
46:01
Speaker 1: All right, Today is a good day. To have a
46:03
Speaker 1: good day. I'll see you next week.