How We Learned to Stop Worrying and LOVE THE T

The research remains thin, but legions of hormone evangelists are spreading the gospel of testosterone supplementation for women.

- FIORELLA VALDESOLO

The notion of women “having it all” entered the public consciousness in the 1980s, thanks to a self-help book of the same name by longtime Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown.

Ever since, the concept has resurfaced in discussions of ambition, motherhood, and partnership, and what it takes to juggle them. The outcome is often the same: that “having it all” is a myth.

But in the corner of the internet reserved for women in midlife where hormone regimens are discussed with GRWM regularity, “having it all” has been deemed a real possibility. And the key, according to many of those proselytizing, is testosterone. It changed my life. I felt like a husk of a human before getting on it. I feel alive in a way I haven’t felt in such a long time. The testosterone testimonials, fervent and ever more frequent in our social media feeds, promise that this long-misunderstood hormone is what we need to make us stronger, sexier, sharper, happier.

For the uninitiated, the word testosterone likely calls to mind gym bros who want to get pumped up like