Shrink it and Pink it

I had the honor of being a panelist at the WNY Women’s Foundation Leadership Summit last week. It was so empowering to see over 900 women (and some men too) come together to support the advancement of women. With topics such as Imposter Syndrome, Salary Negotiation, Emotional Intelligence for Resilience and a powerhouse line-up of speakers, I walked away feeling energized and part of a community for change.

But now I am back in my day-to-day life juggling a million things and a question is running through my head:

How do we keep the momentum going?

It’s such a big and overwhelming question that can go in a million directions. Let's start with: Shrink and Pink It.

So full disclosure- I'm going through perimenopause now which is a HUGE biological change in a woman’s body. One of the recent Mel Robbins podcasts on women's health I listened to was with Dr. Stacy Sims, an exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist. Dr. Sims referenced “shrink it and pink it” as a common phrase in her field. What does it mean exactly? When manufacturers designed something for a man but want to make it available for a woman- they make it smaller and slap some pink on it.

Shrink it and Pink it.  

Ummm…there are some obvious problems with this.

Did they not read Men Are from Mars Women are from Venus?

Do they not know we are different?

Very different??

The medical field did not…for a VERY LONG TIME.

Doing Harm by Maya Dusenbery is a great book I read last year that spoke directly to how women were ignored in medical research until basically the 1990’s (yes you read that right). Drug Testing, disease research studies…you name it- women were left out entirely.

They wouldn’t even test female mice.

Whatever conclusions the researchers found on men, were just applied to women with no scientific back up. And the book highlights many examples of how wrong this thinking was including symptoms of a stroke and the effectiveness of aspirin to prevent heart attack - vastly different between men and women.

Just another version of Shrink it and pink it.   

The good news is…now women are included in medical testing. But how much time have we lost?

And this all hit home for me in a very personal way this week.  One of my very best friends had a massive stroke at the age of 50. From the outside she is in perfect health- an exercise instructor, healthy eater, no chronic conditions, no history of heart problems. How did this happen so completely out of the blue?

You might be inclined to say- sometimes terrible things just happen.

Doctors can't predict everything.

Science only goes so far...we still have so much to learn.

Yes, yes and yes.

Yet....

Knowing what I know now about how little attention has been paid to women’s health over the past 70 years…that is a hard pill to swallow.

Shink it and Pink it is simply not good enough.

So how do we bring about change?

I’m not going to pretend to have all the answers…but this is what I know:

We are stronger together. Building a community of passionate women AND men who are willing to work together to drive change is critical. We have to be working together and all steering the ship in the right direction. This is a huge feat, but I believe it can be done. The work the WNY Women's Foundation is doing is a great start.

Build Awareness by Educating Yourself. One thing that I think is amazing today is access to information. We have so many resources at our fingertips. The hard part is deciphering what is fact and what is opinion. But it’s not impossible. We are all managing a million things day to day…how can we help each other?

For example, are you facing menopause or is your spouse, daughter, sister or friend facing menopause? The book The New Menopause by Dr. Mary Claire Haver was an amazing resource for me – I felt so much more equipped to have a conversation about my own health when I felt educated. And I am not getting this information from my doctors.

So, I’ll end with repeating this: Shrink it and Pink it is not good enough.

My friend deserves better.  We all deserve better.