In 2016, Bettany et al. bemoaned the “eerie silence” in marketing, and indeed the market, relating to menopause. Others later proclaimed that “the menopause appears to be one of the last female taboos to be tackled by anyone – let alone marketers and advertisers” (Kemp, 2018). Since then, something of a revolution has occurred in this regard (Ducourtieux, 2022; Jacobs, 2023) with the vicissitudes of the menopause transition being discussed by celebrity talk show hosts (Jacobs, 2023), raised in popular media series (Muir, 2022), on daytime TV, and even by politicians debating access to hormone replacement therapy and the establishment of menopause as a health priority in parliament (Orgad & Rottenberg, 2023). What has been called the menopause market gold rush has emerged (Geddes, 2022), highlighting a rapidly expanding market for products and services reportedly worth as much as $600 billion annually (Hinchcliffe, 2020).
The menopause transition, a natural part of biological ageing, involves a decline in estrogen levels that may cause adverse physical and psychological symptoms in women and usually begins with changes in the menstrual cycle (Davis et al. 2022; Gunter, 2021). Management scholars have focused attention on menopause in the workplace and how women’s bodily experiences are overlooked in structures, processes, and practices within organisations (Atkinson et al., 2021; Beck et al., 2021; Jack et al., 2019). In marketing, Stevens et al. 2020 have evaluated gendered ageing practices, Bettany et al. (2016) have critically assessed the menopause void in marketing and offered new conceptual avenues to explore the so-called “pinkification” of the menopause market (Bettany, 2023). However, despite the growing market for menopause, disciplinary debate about its emergence, development, and implications is lacking and warrants rigorous investigation.
Our special issue draws attention to the menopause transition, inviting contributions that evaluate how this biological change is being processed by marketers and sold back to consumers. We are interested in work that evaluates the contemporary construction of visual cultures around this transition (Muir, 2019), as well as analyses of marketized, middle-aged body representations (hair, skin, hormones and bones) that may or may not undermine consumers’ self-perception and self-esteem. We also see significant potential for knowledge transfer and cross-fertilization with closely related topics such as social media-amplified resistance to the consumption of hormonal supplements (Schneider-Kamp & Takhar, 2023) and gender-specific logics of everyday consumer self-care (Schneider-Kamp & Askegaard, 2021).
The special issue is international in scope and equally welcomes conceptual and empirical research from marketing researchers and social scientists. We encourage contributors to submit traditional academic papers, but also encourage other dissemination forms that include essays, videographic work, personal introspections, and autoethnographies. Ultimately, we are looking for diversity in terms of content, methodology, and the presentation of ideas. Specific topics/areas of enquiry may include, but are not limited by the following:
- The influence of digital menopause activism on marketing strategies
- The potential for marketers and advertisers to subvert pathological perceptions of the menopause/mid-life transition
- The types of rhetrickery (misleading advertising discourses) utilized against consumers
- The deconstruction/construction of mid-life bodies in the context of meno-advertising
- The efficacity of menopause influencers in disseminating reliable health knowledge to consumers
- Risks of popular media MHT (menopausal hormone therapy) recommendations
- How menopausal commercial cultures are tied to celebrity culture
- The lack of intersectional menopausal transition market representation
- Overmarketing of hormone replacement therapies/natural remedies.
(The full Call for Papers including references can be found at the JMM blog site: https://www.jmmnews.com/menopause/)
