Veronica Webb started her modeling career in the ’80s and has been featured on the covers of Vogue, Essence, ElleAnd many more. As a Revlon spokesmodel, she was the first Black supermodel to be awarded an exclusive contract by a major cosmetics firm. She has appeared in critically-acclaimed films including Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever, The Big TeaseAnd Malcolm XHe has also had recurring roles on TV shows, including BeckerAnd Clueless.
Webb is one of the most successful women in the globe, with many decades of success. However, she was totally blindsided when she experienced something nearly 1 billion women face every day: menopause.
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“My mother was an RN, my sister is a doctor, and no one really talked about menopause,”Webb addressed an audience at The Marvelous Mrs. Menopause. Caire Beauty organized the eventLast month in New York City “And when it happened to me, it caught me so unaware. I had every single symptom you can think of: heavy periods, brain fog, hot flashes, can’t sleep, depressed, everything.”
Webb was born in the 46th year of her mother’s life, which was a time when many women were well into perimenopause. In many families, women in the same family also refer to menopause with euphemisms, such as “my own private summer”And “the flash.”
“It gave me this feeling that menopause was something that was never going to happen to me, or it would happen so late in my life that it wouldn’t even be an issue,”She spoke to the crowd of predominantly 50-something women gathered on the 74th Floor of One World Trade Center.
Invariably, there will be symptoms of “the flash” came knocking on her door, menopause didn’t register as the cause.
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“My husband was like, ‘What’s wrong with you? I want you back.’ I just thought, ‘I’m going crazy, it can’t be menopause,””Webb said.
When she finally realized that’s exactly what it was, she decided she was not going to be quiet and ashamed about it. She would instead Use her platformSpread the word that menopause, getting older and other changes are normal parts of life.
“It’s not a disease,”Webb said. “It’s something that we should all look forward to. It brings freedoms, and it brings responsibilities for taking care of your health. I’m happy to be here.”
Webb was kind enough to sit down with me after the event to share her menopause story and the struggles she faced in order to make menopause conversation more open-minded.
Q: What made you decide to use your platform for this particular cause?
A: “Because when I went through menopause, even though I come from a family that’s very well-educated and very fluent in the medical silo, it caught all of us by surprise, including my sister who’s an M.D.”
Q: I Think You Mentioned On The Panel That Your Sister Said That They Didn’t Really Learn About Menopause In Medical School.
A: “No, not at all. Menopause wasn’t covered in medical school. My mother was a nurse, and her work was amazing. My mother was in the perimenopause at the time I was born.
“Those conversations were just never had. And when women did talk about it when I was younger, this is like in the ‘70s and ‘80s, people just said, ‘Oh, I’m having my own private summer.’”
Q: Beauty is so important in the world of modeling. Was it difficult to come out and say, ‘Menopause Is A Thing That We All Go Through, Whether You’re A Model Or You’re A Housewife?’
A: “Well, for someone like me to feel out of control and uninformed about something that was happening in my body was intolerable.
“And of course, yes, when you are in a youth-obsessed business, the conversation about beauty, up until really the reckoning of the Me Too movement, the conversation about beauty was cut off even before pregnancy. It was a hard transition that I had to make, and it felt like jumping off of a cliff when my first blog post about menopause appeared seven or eight years ago.
“But it turned out to be just a two-foot cliff, really. It became more comfortable sort of quickly. You realize that menopause is not a disease or a condition, it’s a phase of life that we all go through. And every woman who has been important in your life, if she lived long enough, she’s menopausal.”
Q: If You’re Lucky Enough To Live Long Enough, You Go Through It. Nine years ago, you were a pioneer in this topic. This must have been a very uncomfortable experience.
A: “It was entirely outside of my comfort zone. But I had a lot of experience with stuff like this because when I first moved to New York in the ‘80s and I was in the fashion business, I lived through the AIDS crisis and lost so many people.
“The most powerful saying I think in the AIDS crisis from Act Up was ‘Silence equals death.’ But in menopause, it’s silence equals shame. And we shouldn’t be ashamed of a natural process, any more than women should be ashamed of having a period or everything that happens after you have a baby that no one ever tells you about until the baby’s there.”