Go to the About the Company section of iamstripes.com, the website for Stripes, a new beauty and wellness menopause brand launched in October of this year. You’ll find a brief but poignantly descriptive letter written by actor, entrepreneur, and activist Naomi Watts, who is also the new brand’s founder and chief creative officer. In the letter describing why she founded Stripes, she writes, “Over the course of my career as an actor, I’ve outrun tsunamis and come face-to-face with ‘King Kong.’ But nothing prepared me for early menopause. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat. My skin was dry and itchy. My hormones were all over the place. I remember feeling so confused and alone, like I didn’t have control over my own body.”
Why They Made the Worthy 100: It’s a short but insightful story that should resonate with a vast audience. Consider the following statistics from the brand’s website: 50 percent, or half of the earth’s population, goes through menopause, but nearly 75 percent of women who seek help from their doctors for symptoms of menopause leave untreated. For many women, the name “menopause” itself is cloaked in euphemisms, such as “the change” or “midlife crises.”
But it’s precisely those feelings of isolation and confusion due to misinformation that led Watts to take action to develop the new brand, which includes a rich website that will feature a plethora of guides called “menoguides,” geared to demystify menopause and help inform this community: “How to Talk to Your Gyno About Menopause” and “Symptoms Guide: Everything You Need to Know About Perimenopause” are two such menoguides featured on the website.
For Watts, offering such useful information is a great way to serve this highly overlooked community, but it’s just the first step. Watts has also partnered with Amyris, Inc., a leading synthetic biotechnology company, to create a line of “holistic, science-backed solutions that promote overall wellness for people experiencing menopause.”
Watts says, “I created Stripes because we deserve support, solutions, and the space to figure it all out. Because while menopause may be part of midlife, midlife is a lot more than just menopause.”
