If you do a simple Google search for "I'm hot in bed, how do I stay cool?" Google will spit out at you a few tips and tricks that can provide band aid solutions for what 4 billion women will eventually all transition through - the hottest, hormonally driven points in their lives.
When women cycle monthly, when women birth, after women birth, in perimenopause and in menopause. We are hot in bed! And we need solutions!
And you know these so-called "Tips and tricks'' are a complete waste of time for anyone actually looking for a genuine solution. The top ranking Google article suggests that sleepers put on the air conditioning or open a window. Oh, thanks Brian from marketing, we didn't think of those ones! Promotion for Brian everyone!
When we first started looking at these solutions for women, we initially felt like we would have no place for our company in such a huge market, thinking surely these large companies have a solution catered for women’s unique needs. Surely, someone would have come up with something by now- 4 billion potential customers globally, that is a market! But there wasn’t.
Like us, you may be wondering, if so many women are destined to go through perimenopause and menopause, then why isn't there a better solution for women out there? We had many conversations with incumbents in the market to understand that women are rarely the focus of design and that solidified our pathway to make sure that women will always be the focus of ours.
Oh, and you best believe that people have told us that women are niche. Hot women are niche. It isn’t a real problem. Is menopause really a big deal, are you sure menopausal women have problems? You don’t need two guesses to understand the demographic of the questioners.
According to Forbes, the menopausal consumer market is valued at over $1Trillion globally. But the reason for this market gap is that traditionally women over the age of 40 become what is known as the Invisible Market. On the one hand, it could be considered a marketer’s dream to find an untapped and wealthy market desperate for solutions. On the other, the question is why.
At Phenxx, we see it differently. We see it as society’s clearest malfunction. That the wisdom, beauty and offerings of an entire generation are ignored, devalued and wasted. For us, this is about developing products and solutions for women to live pleasurable, joyful and passionate lives. And sleep, good, restful and restorative sleep, is paramount to a meaningful life.
How can companies create and produce tailor designed products for women, especially women aged 40 plus, if they are invisible, ignored and overlooked?
They don’t. So they didn’t.
It took the Femtech revolution for women to start designing products for other women suffering from the same issues across menstruation to menopause to fertility to wellness and lifestyle to tech and wearables for women to have the tailored and purpose designed solutions they need.
Phenxx is one such pioneer in this space. Understanding that the sleep gap is more than just crying babies needing breastfeeding that skews the sleeping data between men and women over their lives. It is that our bodies change so much not only every month during our menstrual cycle, but over our reproductive life cycle too.
We get hot. And when we get hot, we cannot turn it off. And when we get hot and can’t turn it off at night - we can’t sleep.
We bleed once a month and need to go on with life like that’s nothing and no big deal. We show up to work, to the gym, to the million obligations the world is holding us accountable to while dealing with hormonal and temperature changes, cramps and energy dips. We spend our lives checking ourselves in the mirror for leaks, we have to think of clothes designed for when we are bleeding and keep tabs in diaries or apps for when it is coming. We do this without complaint, just getting on with it, a part of life.
We prepare for sleeping with periods with tampons, cups, pads and period underwear. We take care to avoid leaks, but they happen anyway. We do more washing and stain removal of our sheets. We put it down to just a part of life. We do more work because we don’t have products designed for us.
We grow babies and our bodies are furnaces.
We birth those babies out and we are met with profuse sweating and bleeding, our organs and body in overdrive producing whatever is required to keep humans grown and alive. Living on 2-3 hour stretches of sleep for months (sometimes years) is a superpower (named oxytocin).
We reach perimenopause and it isn’t the beautiful gift of ending what for some of us is a 30-40 year career in monthly bleeding, it is the hardest 7-15 (sometimes more) years of our lives, where we are on fire, a human walking furnace, with acne and crazy mood swings and insanity replaces what were once rational and reasonable mental functioning. We bleed heavy and irregularly, often with the hormonal rage we haven’t experienced since we were 13 years old. We leak, we stain, we cry and we sweat. Our bed is ruined - but doesn’t that just feel like it in keepign with the rest of life?
And then, finally, we reach the destination of menopause, and instead of being met with a milestone akin to our ancestors of wise grandmother with wisdom to share and a place in society akin to an elder and wise woman, we are thrust into another 2-3 decades of work within a society that doesn’t appreciate or value us in this stage of life, where we have lived and learned and grown and could offer that to many. Where our style of thinking and working doesn’t quite fit with the corporate culture, They try to fit us in a box instead of unleash our talents and wisdom. Our families think matriarch means “does everything for everyone” and the burden of working full time, taking care of children who linger longer and longer and elderly parents who live longer and need more assistance as well as the house and work schedules, trying to have some hobbies or enjoyment at the same time means it is all too much.
We are exhausted.
Oh - and we are supposed to keep it all quiet. Behind the scenes. Don’t bother anyone else.
And then, after this groundhog day comes to a close and it's time for bed, insomnia heat and inability to sleep commence. Laying awake feeling on fire, mind ticking over with a new breed of anxiety, hormones a mess… we count down the number of hours we have until we have to wake up and do it all again.
And no. There isn’t a company on the planet who has sat and spoken with women at every stage of their lives to understand what they go through, how they live, how they sleep and why these challenges exist and what to do about them.
It’s not because none of them employ women or none of them know first hand. It’s because we are trained into secrecy. Into keeping taboos. Into silence and submission. This divided culture is deliberately ripping our culture apart and allowing this earned wisdom to be lost and discredited.
The crone, our wise woman, who was once the backbone of the family and community, is now ignored and annoying. We are the first living women to have a whole life as menopausal and geripausal women. And what respect have we got for that? We do not need to agree and play by the rules of a society where youth is valued and wisdom disregarded. We need to say no and we need to ask for more.
It is up to us to rewrite the rules for ourselves. It is up to us to use our voices to say what we need and why we need it. It is up to us to herald a time of deeper held values that took longer to develop and earn. In the age of get quick rich and instant gratification, the age earned experience and knowledge needs a new platform to stand on.
The role of the feminine needs to take up more space. The feminine way is to slow down, go with the flow and receive and intuit. It is heart and it is body. We cannot gestate a baby faster than nature allows, and the role of timing needs to come back into full power. The role of the crone, the role of the mother and the role of the grandmother are needed to be restored to full glory for us to restore our societies to balance and harmonious living.
It is up to us, as women who know what we need, to design products and solutions to our own problems and come together in community to support and love each other like we haven’t for many centuries. It takes a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to keep a woman vibrant, thriving and alive. We are communal creatures and we need each other, now more than ever.
If you ever wish to share your story to help your community or find solace in voicing your point of view, please send it to us or reach out to us for support and connection.