The Menopause Makeover: For When "Aging Gracefully" Gets Old

Because literally everything-from eyelids to neck skin to boobs to butt-falls off a cliff. Here, a dozen interventions women in this life stage are embracing.

- RORY EVANS

It took roughly 50 years for Lara* to discover she could have it all.

Sure, she had a great family, a fulfilling job as a writer-those things definitely count. But in the past 10 or so years, the 55-year-old has also given herself a head-to-toe transformation via routine Botox and IPL facials, dental veneers, a breast reduction, and Ozempic.

"I know they say you have to choose between your face and your waist, but can't I get a little done on each area?" she jokes.

Her husband, also in his 50s, is entirely against these procedures: "He's like, 'I thought we were going to get old together.'

And I'm like, 'I would love to get old with you at the same pace asyou. But you didn't have two kids, and you didn't gain 40 pounds during the pandemic or was it the perimenopause? and then lose 40 pounds with Ozempic,"" she says.

Eavesdrop on any 40- and 50-something women in a restaurant or the bleachers of a boring high school soccer game, and it can all feel very Are You There God? It's Me, Menopause. Just think about how many Gen Xers grew up on Judy Blume's 1970 book. That seminal ovular novel primed a generation of girls-like so many stimulated follicles-to talk frankly and humorously about their periods. Then their birth control.

Then their adventures in infertility and pregnancy and breastfeeding and, for some, the subsequent mommy makeover: a nip and a tuck to their stretched-to-the-limit boobs, tummy, and vagina. Hot-flash-forward to menopause, and your friends have no shame or shyness in declaring things like "My last period resembled rusty water" or "I can't remember a goddamn thing" or "My eyelids are like soggy sandwich bags.