WWSLD: What would Stacy London do?
5 takeaways from our updated interview
When we first interviewed Stacy London in 2021, she was building State of Menopause, a health and wellness company that made products to address menopausal symptoms.
In 2023, London sunset the company, because, although she retains a deep interest in the field, she wanted to move away from a product focus. As she put it on Instagram, “my interest lies in connecting us, in collaborating, in amplifying all the voices in this space. …Product has not held the same interest for me personally. I love being brand-agnostic!”
In short, London has earned her throne as the Maven of Midlife. She continues to be in the trenches working as a reigning leader of menopause advocacy and is an advisor to women’s health- and peri/menopause-focused companies Wile, Evernow, and Flow Health.
She notes that the wind-down of State Of Menopause is in the service of a “much bigger idea that I’m really excited about launching…this is not an ending. Well, it is an ending … It’s like menopause. It’s an evolution…a transformation. And it is the next thing that’s coming for me.”
We talked with Stacy again in January 2024 to see what she’s up to now. Here are some of the top takeaways from the new in-depth interview you can read here.
1. You probably have a lot more life left to go. What do you want to do with it?
“We’re not dying at 60; we’re dying in our 90s. We’re in our prime, so can we stop saying at 50, “I’m done?” You’re halfway through the book and that’s when it gets really good; that’s where all the plot twists and crazy characters are.
This is an amazing time of life with a lot of life experience already banked. If you’re 50, you’ve already lived an amazing amount of experience. What do you do with that many more days in front of you? You’ve got maybe 40 years; what are you going to do?”
2. Not every relationship is meant to last a lifetime.
“I was watching a dumb movie called The Girl Before, with David Oyelowo. [His character] said something like, ‘Why do people hold on to relationships when they're no longer what we want?”
We're conditioned to believe that's the way to be but in younger generations we see less of that. There’s less emphasis on this idea that monogamy is the end all, be all; that you have to be with the same person for the rest of your life.”
3. It’s cool to be the cool aunt.
“There's been more than one time in my life where people said to me, ‘You should have a baby, you’d be much happier,’ but I don’t really feel maternal instincts unless it’s about my dog.
I don’t know whether it’s that I don’t have that gene, or am just not affected by that pull, or I had a lot of issues with my mom growing up and don’t know that I would have been a good mom. There are a lot of things that fed into it, but I never make excuses for myself.
I love my friends who have children and I love their children, but that just isn’t the path I wanted. And I am obsessed with my niece, Hazel, who was just born.”
4. Wear whatever you want.
“How do you dislodge a belief system that maybe never served you and never allowed you to be the person you wanted to be or look how you wanted to look? All because, I don't know, Aunt Thelma when you were 4 said you were chubby and should never wear prints.
We live in such a different world now: Body positivity is such a fantastic movement. Adaptive wardrobe positivity is becoming a thing and your style has the potential to reflect all of that.”
5. Menopause might just be on its way to mainstream.
“These days, we’re hearing people talk every day about perimenopause or menopause but this was not the topic du jour when I started talking about it.
Somebody told me I was committing career [suicide]. But now even celebrities like Halle Berry has rē•spin [a product-focused website that “reframes menopause as hormone deficiency”] and Naomi Watts [the Founder of Stripes, a brand focused on hydration in menopause.] So, it’s been getting more and more normalized every day.”
Read more about what’s next and top of mind for Stacy here.
