Naomi Watts is tired of the silence. In an Oct. 18 interview with InStyle, Watts spoke out about her isolating experience with perimenopause, her difficult journey to pregnancy later in life, and the messaging behind her new brand, “Stripes.” On a personal level, she says her passion to end the stigma surrounding menopause ignited after she started developing symptoms of perimenopause at the age of 36. With the exception of a helpful makeup artist, Watts found herself struggling to navigate these new and uncomfortable changes, along with a whole host of unfamiliar symptoms that no one seemed to talk about. She didn’t fully realize what was happening to her body until she and her then-partner, Liev Schreiber, went to get a blood panel done in an effort to conceive a child.
“I knew that there are changes to the body around the age of 35, but I didn’t know that it was a really late time to start thinking about getting pregnant,” Watts explained. With the help of her doctor, she did eventually get pregnant, giving birth to her now 15-year-old, Sasha, and soon after, she got pregnant a second time, but this made her perimenopause symptoms intensify. “I just knew it was not a good thing to be walking through the same kind of loneliness and secrecy and shame again,” Watts said. “I did test the waters with friends out there by cracking jokes about menopause, and they weren’t really met with open ears and empathy. It was just like, let’s move on to the next subject.”
Growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of discussion surrounding this very real and natural experience she was facing, Watts finally decided to take matters into her own hands, partnering with biotech company Amyris to create 11 products that use an emollient called ectoine to address all kinds of perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms. “We included hair and body stuff, and then the vaginal products because that’s also an area that suffers,” Watts said. “One thing people say about menopause is that the libido lessens, and of course it does a little bit because our hormones are not driving our moods anymore. But it doesn’t mean we stop thinking about sex or we stop wanting sex; we still have desire. You just have to get a little more organized and put a little more effort into it.”
