It was 10 in the morning, and Dr. Marie Claire Haver, an OB-GYN, had already recorded a video in her pajamas on solutions for low sex drive for her combined four million followers on Instagram and TikTok. Now Dr. Haver, 56, was walking briskly on her Peloton treadmill while reading a study on female sexual dysfunction.
It was part of her normal morning routine, but this day, she was being filmed for a documentary series about thriving through perimenopause.
She squatted for the third time with an 85-pound barbell. “I’m not thinking about what I’m going to look like in a bikini,” she said to the filmmakers who had gathered in her garage gym. “I’m thinking about what I’m going to look like at 80.” With her shiny black hair, dark-rimmed glasses and lithe physique, Dr. Haver looked like the model of youth compared to the “Golden Girls” menopause stereotypes of yore.
Over the course of two days, in interviews at her home in Galveston, Texas, she repeated to me something she’d said to her audience that morning: If women are proactive, they aren’t destined to slowly decline after their reproductive years. Their menopausal years might even be their best years. Or, as she likes to say, “Menopause is inevitable; suffering through it is not.”
Six thousand women reach menopause every day in the United States, but there are only about 2,300 providers certified in menopause medicine. Many women struggle to find clinicians who are experienced and informed enough to guide them through the transition. The void has been filled by a thriving crowd of menopause influencers, with Dr. Haver at the helm. In the last two years, she has arguably done more to educate women about menopause than any other public figure, through her social media platforms and best-selling book “The New Menopause.” She has called out sexism in medicine, demanded increased federal funding for women’s health research and called on medical schools to better prepare doctors to care for women beyond their reproductive years. Both publicly and in her private menopause practice, she has crusaded to dispel deep-seated fears about hormone therapy, arguing that it carries a long list of benefits for health and wellness.
On TikTok and Instagram, Dr. Haver comes across as authoritative and empathetic, addressing her followers as if they are not only her patients but also her friends. She speaks with urgency, often against a green-screen backdrop of a published study, breaking down research simply yet emphatically.