Menopause and the Market: understanding the transitions to post-menopause through the lives of professional women

“Why, after having been only bodies, women should live today as if they had no body?” (Froidevaux-Metterie 2015: 13) Consuming to a new life stage is commonplace for other life transitions women face so why is the menopause largely absent in consumption and the market? Motivated by an eerie silence about menopause we report the early findings from our study of 17 professional women at different stages of menopause. We ask three interlinked questions: how are contemporary professional women transitioning to, through and past menopause? What kind of market and consumption representations do they face to help (or hinder) negotiation of this transition? and how do they respond to these to maintain and build a secure professional identity in the face of menopause? Our findings suggest that menopause is a myriad of often conflicting experiences, identity and gender issues, professional challenges and celebrations, and bodily emergences. Consuming to and through menopause is riddled with complexity, contradictions, solutions and open endings