The Commodification of Menopause

Same as it ever was

Still-Life with Fruit, Flowers, and Insects, Rachel Ruysch, 1711

I have a little mustache. I didn’t care, or even really know, about it until the 7th grade boys pointed it out. Middle school is, notoriously, a deep ring of hell from which none of us return unscathed. It was there that I learned about shaving, bleaching, and waxing to appease the tween critics. The great, hungry maw of the beauty industrial complex (BIC) was waiting for…