Sitting cross-legged and cozy on a couch, Naomi Watts addresses some of her followers on TikTok. “If you said to me I was gonna start a menopause brand as a kid,” she pauses, “I would have laughed.” Watts then explains the genesis of her menopausal-wellness brand, Stripes Beauty. She says she didn’t know what was going on with her mind, her body—“everything”—and there was no community. “No hand-holding.”
Today, Stripes sells three different supplements, including a daily probiotic that claims to support healthy bones and muscles, maintain the immune system, and help relieve stress, hot flashes, and brain fog to boot.
Wellness has quickly but decisively become the industry du jour, with actors jumping on the green-juice-fueled bandwagon. However, menopause is potentially the most surprising sector to join forces with Hollywood. Not too long ago, an actor wouldn’t admit, let alone discuss, this phase of life (owing in part to Hollywood’s entrenched ageism). Today, as health permeates all aspects of life and culture, menopause, too, is going mainstream.
Watts isn’t the only actor turned menopreneur. Judy Greer launched Wile, a menopause-supplement brand; Drew Barrymore partnered with the supplement brand Dr. Kellyann &ME Peri + Menopause; Oscar winner Halle Berry created a digital platform focused on menopausal health, including Pendulum Therapeutics probiotics and supplements. Berry is Pendulum’s chief communications officer and spokesperson as well as an equity owner and investor.
Menopause is still a largely untapped—and lucrative—opportunity. Symptoms ranging from night sweats to sleep issues can last from 2 to 14 years, costing billions in expenses and lost work. The menopause market is expected to top $24 billion by 2030—and it’s not yet as crowded as other women’s-health sectors, such as parenting or pregnancy.
Meanwhile, many actors are tempted by the supplements industry, considering Americans spend about $50 billion annually on dietary supplements, and more than 60 percent of women regularly take multivitamins or other supplements. Magic pills and gummies are now found almost everywhere, from Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom to Sephora.
By branding themselves as both entrepreneurs and guinea pigs, most of these boldface names claim to be part of the creation process, tapping into their own health routines and discoveries, says Christine Whelan, clinical professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “It’s becoming a more intimate sales pitch, and it is being intimately delivered directly to consumers via social media.”
This new generation leans into the relatable factor, striving for a tone that’s more candid-B.F.F.-next-door than movie-star-on-a-pedestal. “Menopause hit me like a big, gnarly Mack truck!” Watts wrote on her Instagram, after sharing that she’d suffered from a variety of symptoms, including hair loss. Barrymore, meanwhile, posted about weight gain, hot flashes, and mood swings (before promoting her supplement partnership). “They’re selling normalcy,” says Vince Parry, a health-branding expert and founder of Parry Branding Group. As in, you can still be the same person even if you have these changes going on.
As co-founder of Wile, Greer is selling pills that claim to reduce the severity, frequency, and duration of hot flashes, and to “support” mood, focus, sleep, and stress tolerance. (Defining or measuring “support” is a bit of an enigma, but unlike definitive terms such as “treat,” “fix,” or “cure,” it is legally permissible within the supplement sector.) There’s also a “burnout relief” tincture, and a product called Un-Anger, which claims to offer fast-acting relief for irritability and stress. (Greer says just a drop or two keeps her calm and in control when she feels “ragey.”) Wile’s Stave the Crave drink mix claims to reduce sugar cravings and stress eating.
The line was formulated by a “naturopathic physician,” which can be a misleading term. Naturopaths do not attend conventional medical school, and some states even bar them from using the term “physician.”
When I inquire whether Wile has studies attesting to the efficacy of its products, co-founder and C.O.O. Corey Scholibo says they have none. Instead, he points to studies on some of the individual ingredients used in them.
But conflating ingredient efficacy with product efficacy is “apples to oranges,” says Stephanie Faubion, M.D., director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Women’s Health and the medical director of the North American Menopause Society. Brands could use a minuscule, fairy-dust amount, or could combine ingredients in ways that impact their effectiveness. To make these claims about effectiveness, Dr. Faubion says, “you need to go through rigorous clinical [product] studies.” Dr. Faubion is also clear about something else: no supplement has been found to effectively address hot flashes.
Most supplement brands do not have the budgets to conduct finished-product studies, says Scholibo. But, he adds, “you don’t need a finished-product study to get into any retailer.” That includes Whole Foods, which now carries Wile.
Still, these brands’ Web sites could easily persuade a consumer that adequate evidence supports their claims. Stripes’s Web site is filled with impressive-sounding descriptions such as “proven clinical results” and statistics about their supplements, like “90% noticed a reduction in night sweats.” However, in tiny, nearly illegible print, the disclaimer reveals that these claims are based on a 28-day home-use, consumer-perception study of just 32 women.
Creating a supplement brand has a low barrier to entry. It takes approximately a decade and more than $1 billion to develop a new drug approved by the F.D.A., including scientific testing to demonstrate that it delivers on its claims. Developing and launching supplements, on the other hand, can take one to three years and reportedly around $100,000. (Wile launched within just a year and a half.) These are unregulated products; the F.D.A. does not regulate supplements for efficacy.
Often, actresses partner with an expert or guru who can lend their line legitimacy, as Barrymore did with Kellyann Petrucci, who identifies as a “naturopathic doctor.” That gives the product line a sense of insider cachet, coming from the actor’s personal expert. The message is “‘Hey, this guru almost solved my problem for me, and now I want to share this with all of you,’” says Whelan. “There is the narrative of ‘I was lost and now I’m found. I was struggling with this just like you.’ That’s very compelling.”
Further, by presenting these wellness products like Glossier makeup—sleek packaging, lifestyle photography, cheeky copy, Sephora product placement—actresses make menopause and its symptoms far more approachable and less stigmatized than they’ve been in the past. And while their products look and sound almost like cosmetics, that minimizes the seriousness that goes into real, therapeutic health solutions. We risk treating health as fashion.
It’s understandable why some women might trust an actor’s supplement brand, even one sold at Sephora. Plenty of women feel disappointed, frustrated, and distrustful of the medical community. Perhaps, as patients, their symptoms were minimized or even ignored. Barrymore herself had a “horrible experience” in which she felt “completely dismissed” by her doctor, according to the Dr. Kellyann Web site. Actors—especially reputable ones—have gained our trust and admiration, and consumers might be more willing to suspend skepticism when considering the products they’re selling.
Besides, dropping a supplement in a shopping cart can feel good. It gives us a sense that we’re investing in a healthier future and that someone we trust is helping us fix a problem. “We’re buying hope,” says Whelan, “and a boost to our sense of self-efficacy.” Many people also prefer to take a supplement, especially a so-called “natural” one, under the belief that it’s safer or more benign than a drug. There’s also the compelling power of the placebo effect.
“Women will often feel better on a sugar pill,” says Faubion. “Does that mean we should sell them a sugar pill for a lot of money?”
It might seem harmless, yet forking over money for non-evidence-based products could hinder women from seeking effective treatments like hormone-replacement therapy or non-hormonal medications (such as fezolinetant) to treat menopause symptoms.
Women need to rely on solutions supported by high-quality studies, stresses Faubion, and there just isn’t sufficient data on these kinds of supplements. Others might counter: These actors are raising awareness, offering reassurance, and building community over a common struggle. Women have suffered in silence, with too few options, for too long. Still, asks Parry, “Where do you draw the line between helpfulness and exploitation in terms of making money off this?”
Rina Raphael is a Los Angeles–based health journalist and author of The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care. She also writes the newsletter Well to Do
