Stacy London On Grief, Aging, Life & Menopause

[Shoshana] Hi, hi, hi! My gosh, Stacy, I’m so happy that we finally made this happen and that you’re here with us.

[Stacy] Me too. We tried to do this last year, unfortunately, it didn’t work out. I’m so thrilled to be here this year.

[Shoshana] So, I got to tell you, my first lessons in fashion came from watching the incredible show you hosted for 12 years, What Not to Wear. And my little sister, somewhere here, uh, can tell you I needed those lessons. I really did. I carried them with me today.

[Stacy] Well, I appreciate that so much. And I think if we tried to do What Not to Wear now, it would probably be a little bit different. There’s a lot that’s happened in the last 20 years in terms of how we talk about fashion. So, you know, Clinton and I have a new show coming out, uh, on Amazon, sometime next year. We have reunited, but it is not a remake of What Not to Wear. Um, it’s called Wear Whatever the F You Want.

[Shoshana] I’m so excited to watch that.

[Stacy] There will still be lessons, life lessons.

[Shoshana] So, Stacy, you’ve dedicated your career to helping people find confidence and identity through style. Yes. And as you’ve shifted your focus from fashion to wellness, especially around times of transition like menopause, how has your understanding of self-worth and transformation evolved?

[Stacy] Well, you know, I think self-worth is always a complicated issue, right? Self-worth is not based in nature; it’s more based in nurture. It’s how you’re raised, it’s who tells you things when you’re young, things that get impressed on your brain, like your aunt told you you could never wear green, right? And you think, “Oh my God, I can’t wear it ever,” and it just sticks with you. So self-esteem, you know, really is, I think, when we’re younger, based a lot on external circumstances before we find who we are, before we find our likes and dislikes, before we understand ourselves. But one of the things that happened to me when I was around 47 was, you know, my phone stopped ringing. Didn’t get a permanent, uh, host spot on The View. And now I’m glad that didn’t happen, but you know, I had been on for a year. And I realized my phone was ringing less, and all of a sudden, I didn’t really feel like myself anymore. If I wasn’t my job, if I wasn’t Stacy from What Not to Wear or Stacy from some show, then what was I doing? And I started to have a real spiral, a real spiral around self-esteem and confidence. And it felt like I was changing in a way that was so different from the world that I was used to that I felt a little bit crazy. And I started to notice physical changes. I didn’t know what I wanted to wear anymore. All of a sudden, everything felt like it looked wrong on me. And I started to realize there was something happening that nobody was talking about, which was menopause. And not even my doctors could explain menopause to me. So I went on a five-year journey, um, not only to discover really how to talk about menopause but to take away the shame and the stigma associated with menopause.

Thank you. And because there is grief involved in saying goodbye to who you were to become who you are, and I felt it was really important to talk about all of the physical symptoms you may be experiencing, but certainly the big emotions that you’re going to experience. Um, you know, hormones have a lot to do with feelings, and we experience rage, depression, um, anxiety in ways that we may never have before. So I don’t believe in this theory of the midlife crisis. What I believe in is that we are going through a physiological change just when we are least able to handle it. Um, and I say that because Scientific American did a study many years ago that said the lowest point of happiness in a woman’s life is between 45 and 55. What a surprise! I mean, it’s the highest rate of divorce, it’s the highest rate of depression, it’s the highest rate of decreased earning potential. These things are not by accident. And I think it’s because we don’t understand female physiology well enough to really understand what is happening at this phase.

The other thing that I’ve realized was that in menopause, I think my self-esteem spiraled to its lowest point. I didn’t know what to do. So I started to create communities in order to be able to talk about that. And five years later, we can see that menopause is a very big topic. But I also believe that menopause really changed my relationship to mortality. Um, when I started to experience my perimenopausal symptoms, which were quite severe, my father was dying of heart disease, and I was with him every day. And I had heart palpitations and I had food allergies and skin rashes, just like him. And I thought, “This is the physical manifestation of grief. I can’t, I can’t accept it mentally, but my body is already bracing for his death.” And I did mental gymnastics to explain, you know, how these things could be happening to me, but I had no other explanation at that time. And, um, and I realized that two things: one, that we don’t talk about death enough. We don’t talk about it enough with our friends and our family. But we don’t talk enough about death in our society, the same way we don’t talk about menopause. Because things that are scary to us, we’d rather leave in the dark than shine a light on them. But the minute you shine a light on something, right, it’s not the monster under the bed, it’s dust bunnies. And those are a lot more manageable and easier to talk about. We don’t have to talk about death as this big existential thing. We can talk about death the same way we talk about menopause or we talk about, uh, anything that feels taboo, any kind of sickness, chronic illness. People that you know have had trouble explaining what is happening to them. We are in a position to give them tools. And to me, when I realized that my father passed away and I was next, I realized that I was not going to wind up in one of those white houses at a retirement community in Florida. Nothing wrong with it, just not for me. I started to think about the fact that I may have to work until I die, and in which case, what did I want to do with my living situation? I’m not married, I don’t have children. My friends and I have started talking about intentional communities, um, and also just this idea that if I’m next, what am I going to do with this time in my life to make it as valuable as possible? So by the time that I am on my deathbed, I can, I can just go. I can be at peace with where I am.

[Shoshana] So, yes, we talked about this a little bit, but my dad got sick, and through learning that I have a BRCA mutation, I ended up having a preventative surgery to remove my ovaries, which plunged me into surgical menopause almost overnight.
Absolutely took that risk in a very intentional way. Um, and it’s really hard to be going through so much, through so much physical and emotional turmoil at the same time, where you’re dealing with, with illness and loss. And sadly, you know, I expect this happens to a lot of women. You pointed out 45 to 55-year-olds, you know, the most unhappy cohort. Um, menopause is a topic that’s so, you know, wrapped in, in shame and stigma, as you pointed out. And I just want to say thank you for being so open about it. You know, you’re really leading this movement, like, for all of us to…see

[Stacy] Well, there, there’s a lot of us now. I would say, you know, when we, when I first started looking into it about five years ago, somebody told me in fashion that I was committing career suicide. And when I said I want to start talking about death, they were like, “What are you doing? You’re, you’re just digging.” It turns out menopause is a very big business vertical. This is not just, d and I had started a company to sell products, which I quickly closed because I realized that menopause, you need another face oil when it comes to menopause, right? And this was all about dry skin and hydration, and I understand that. But when I realized what I wanted to be doing in menopause, I was like, “We were getting millions of hits to the site to read the articles and no conversion because who needs a face oil, right? You want somebody to tell you what is going on.” Um, so there was a huge, you know, there’s a huge financial piece to this vertical, but I didn’t want to be on that side of it. I really felt that I wanted to be more like a menopause mentor or Sherpa, create communities where you can ask silly questions and nobody will laugh at you, right? You know, you can be like, “Is it normal that my teeth hurt? Is it normal that my underarms are itching?” Yes, it is, uh, as it turns out. And so, you know, I really started to think very strongly about how important it is, together, as everyone has said here today, these communities. Because with the rise of technology and being alone together, that is not for me. What death is going to be about is death is going to be about community. And I want to start that community now, the way I wish I’d started talking about menopause when I was 20.
[Shoshana] We’ve talked about this a little bit, but I think that menopause is a form of personal transformation, of, of, grief. Um, the grief of losing a younger, maybe version of yourself, as well as changes in your body and mind. You pointed that out.

[Stacy] And I, I’m sorry to interrupt you. I just wanted to go back to what you said. You had preventative, uh, surgery, which, by the way, women are great at. Men, not so much. Um, just for all the guys in the room, preventative, preventative. Um, but you also went through surgical menopause at an age that is not chronological menopause. And I think that normally, we talk about menopause not in terms of surgery or medical menopause, that can come from taking tamoxifen for breast cancer, things like that. If we’re talking about chronological age, we’re really at the, you know, sort of the crosshairs between menopause and, and women, particularly, and maybe gender-expansive folks, aging in society. And aging is the thing that we’re so ashamed of. We’re just not allowed to do. And frankly, as a Gen Xer, you know, lucky me, uh, I grew up with, like, better haircuts and, um, cosmetic dermatology, so I don’t look like a Golden Girl, right? We don’t, we don’t, we, we have things that benefit us. We also know, health-wise, you take 10,000 steps a day or more, don’t smoke, don’t drink. You know, we’ve learned so much in our lifetimes about how to expand. Don’t worry, I drink a martini every once in a while if that’s what you were panicking about. Um, but you know, you got to live your life, right? But, but that idea of expanding our health span, that our longevity is more about the fact that we don’t want to be sick for 20 years before we die, that we want to be healthy up until the moment and then we say goodbye, right? And that has been a huge transformation. What has not transformed is the societal and cultural sort of expectations around women and aging.

[Shoshana] Amen. Um, so I love how you’re connecting the dots between style and well-being. Yes. Um, there’s fascinating research from Becca Levy, who I think you know, from Yale, suggesting that positive beliefs about aging can directly impact our health and longevity, um, and hopefully our healthspan. Um, how do you think self-expression and style can shift the mindset set on aging and help to counteract some of these cultural fears about all of it?

[Stacy] Sure. I mean, one, I think we have to take matters into our own hands. You always have to be your own best advocate. I really believe in that. But the other thing that I think is so important is that self-esteem comes from lots of things, right? And what I like to say is that, you know, menopause, it culturally is sort of some sort of expiration date because you cannot have biological children. Well, I don’t buy that. My feeling is more that, um, all of the things that I value and held dear when I was younger, in my, you know, biologically fertile years, those values have expired, and I go on to become something else. And when I realized that, one of the things I also realized was going into my closet and putting on a dress, like, cut down to my puppet, that was like baby pink, didn’t work for me anymore. And all of a sudden, and it wasn’t even like I wasn’t like, “Oh my God, my body.” I, there was all that, but it was like, “I am a grown-up. Who do I think I am?” So, in a strange way, what wound up happening was the most magical thing. I came full circle because I really stepped away from style to work in women’s health and advocacy, which I continued to do. But I didn’t realize how much my experience with style, self-esteem, and confidence was going to bring me back around to it. And Clinton Kelly and I went on a tour last year. We did the Stacy and Clinton show, which was, uh, really just entertainment. We made fun of What Not to Wear. We talked about our feud. We played games with the audience, really just to see if anybody wanted to, like, hang out with us. And thankfully, a few people did. So thank goodness for that. But one of the things that I heard most were from women who were around my age who had grown up with me watching the show, saying to me, “Where are the clothes? Like I’m 65 years old and I don’t know what to wear that makes me feel as good as some of the clothes that I felt when I was younger and gives me that kind of confidence to keep going? Where are the clothes that are meant for us?” And I thought about that, and I thought that really is kind of a white space in the market, right? Especially when it comes to affordable clothing. So I started a clothing line for women over 50. You got to, you know, when you find the, the white space, right, you just jump into it. Because, and I think that this is what you’ve done, Shoshana. Like these kinds of conversations, where are the solutions, where are the answers that we’re looking for?

Of course, we can’t know what’s on the other side of death, but I’m actually incredibly hopeful. And one of the reasons is when my father was dying, I read two books that changed my life. Um, I’m sure many of you are familiar with Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, who really changed my life. Um, and then I read Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli, which was about, um, quantum mechanics, astromechanics, and quantum physics. And I realized very quickly that Carlo Rovelli is not just a physicist, he’s a poet. And he talks about physics in a way that changed me. He said, “You know, energy cannot die. It changes form, but it can’t die.” And so when I think about my dad and I think about that loss, I’m like, “Well, no, you’re still here. You’re a pulsar, you know, you’re a little dwarf. You’re part of the soil, you’re part of the air.” I don’t feel like he’s not with me because his absence implies presence for me.

[Shoshana] That’s beautiful. So, as we think of mortality as a really universal experience, something that everyone in here knows, we, we all share, um, even if we don’t know what comes after, right? How or what would you say to those who might feel hesitant about engaging with it? And how can, hopefully, embracing this truth help us live more fully in our own bodies and empower us to, to take charge of our lives right now?

[Stacy] Yeah, I’ve never heard of anybody that I know personally or in any public situation who has gotten to the end of their life and said, “God, I wish I’d worn something that I didn’t wear, right? That’s, that’s, I don’t, or, gosh, you know, I, I really wish I’d worn that sequin top.” And, you know, all of those things, I’ve never heard that. But what I have heard is the regret of what we haven’t done. And I think death is just a reminder to say, Go out and do what you haven’t done. Go out and do the things you know, whatever that looks like, whether it’s a bucket list, whether it is about connection and community, which I really believe is the future for us in terms of stigmatized topics. Because everybody in here has some interest and will have some connection to death, if not now, then at some point, right? That is a language we can all speak. And not everybody is willing to speak that language. This willingness allows us to normalize a conversation and then democratize it. So if we’re having it in this room, then all of this information, just like it did in menopause, will be disseminated to a bigger public. And we can start to look at death and plan for death as another new vertical. Because for me, this is also a huge business that is being ignored, right? And we’re, we’re hearing about psychedelics and death. We’re hearing about death doulas and the rise of death doulas. We’re talking about you know there’s a hipster Funeral Home in Williamsburg where Grandma can be a tree you know

[Shoshana] She’s here!

[Stacy] Okay fantastic! And my feeling about that is that that is also a way to take the stigmatization of death and change it by giving us options by understanding that there is a finite time here how can you not value that time here and when you get to that end all of those choices there’s a wonderful uh menopause physician named Dr. Sharon Malone who just wrote a book called Grown Woman Talk which is about will planning and estate planning and how you want you know DNRs and all of the things that most people don’t want to talk about for me I’m like I want to talk about this so nothing goes wrong and so that my friends and family at the end of my life do not feel this heavy weight or burden everything will be done everything will have been under understood and taken care of and that was the greatest gift my grandmother gave to my father and that was the greatest gift he gave to me.

[Shoshana] I love it um I just think you know talking about how death can be a teacher and keep us awake to our lives is just a beautiful way of framing it and we’re going to leave it there. Thank you so much Stacy.

[Stacy] Thank you so much for having me thank you!