Y(Our) Menopause

This research project was conducted as my senior thesis during my senior year of undergrad as well as my honors thesis. The project attempted to meld together my interest in cultural sociology, digital media, biotechnology, and gender. I believe media sites and apps like Youtube and Tik Tok provide a wealth of information on contemporary cultural trends however they are undercited.

In my final presentation of my research, I created a presentation using Adobe Illustrator. I decided upon using a “gender-neutral” palette in an attempt at emphasizing the medical and technical aspects of the medication. The use of lines, accent colors, and limited use of shapes streamlines the visual story in the poster as it is a text-heavy image.

Many practices have been used throughout history to create, maintain, and reinforce gender identity. These practices can range from a simple article of clothing to costly cosmetic surgeries. Magazine advertisements have aided in the perpetuation of these configurations, portraying the ideal versions of womanhood, women's bodies, and feminine presentation, thus reinforcing hegemonic formations of gender. Products that fall under the designation of biotechnologies have been pushed by doctors and the media as a means of reaching a perfect body, ideal gender presentation, or as treatments for medical conditions that have been designated as preventable. Youtube is a medium that offers another mode of expression, granting autonomy to the subject to be able to express their experiences with menopause. Using both magazine advertisements and YouTube videos, I compared the menopause treatment advertisements in magazine advertisements targeted to cisgender women to the experiences of women with menopause as individually documented on Youtube. My findings show examples of encoded ideal gender performance and demonstrate the ways in which hegemonic gender ideals are able to trickle down into women's experiences with menopause and their embodiments of gender and gender performance.