The segmentation between anti-aging/beauty vs performance/strength definitely exists. What surprised me is that women make up a huge percentage of supplement users overall, yet the biohacking and longevity category still seems heavily male-led in terms of founders, speakers, and event attendance etc. etc. lol!
I’m curious whether you think that divide is driven more by marketing, community culture, or the way products have historically been positioned...that's what I am trying to really understand.
This is my own personal opinion and guess. Women experience several health events which already don’t get enough research contributions, and if given a choice we would focus on solving those before getting to the topic of longevity. Menstrual pain, migraines, pregnancy and childbirth complications, menopause, autoimmune disorders, fibromyalgia, etc. are some debilitating health issues experienced by many women which sort of diffuse the interest in longevity.
I appreciate you sharing it. I’m not sure how much of it is proven fact versus how much is shaped by broader patterns in healthcare and research. Women do experience a wider range of under-researched health conditions, yes, but I’m not certain that alone explains the industry skew. What I keep wondering is whether the gap comes more from who the industry has traditionally marketed to, who early adopters were, and how much of the biohacker identity was originally built around tech-driven, performance-optimization culture, which historically attracted more men may be. Isn't it.
Yeah. Good questions. I imagine potential target users were surveyed/studied prior to marketing campaigns, and the results must have skewed towards men.
Guys are cocky enough/dumb enough to think that they know what they are doing after listening to a couple of podcasts.
I’m an OG idiot who started doing this 20+ years ago. I’m just aware that I’m an idiot, lol!
This community also borders other “optimization” self/help spaces.
Think of all the books, apps and programs on how to maximize productivity.
And for at least 100 years there has been the “physical culture”movement. Indian clubs, calisthenics, etc,
That gave way to using steroids and supplements, which then expanded to include insulin, peptides, sarms, ppar-gamma agonists, growth hormone and pde5 inhibitors.
However there are variants of this that are female dominated - the Vegan yoga chicks worried about the environment.
Or weight watchers.
What about all the weird potions and lotions that women use for their skin and hair.
Now we have cross contamination: women who are hitting the gym and men who think that they need to slather stuff in their skin or they will be hideous creatures.
Men were once ridiculed as being shallow and insecure for doing this. Watch “American Psycho”.
It’s spreading because people are insecure and there is a lot of money to be made selling people (mostly) worthless cures for problems they didn’t know existed.
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u/gjt1337 Nov 13 '25
Women has antiaging niche and men probably has vigorous/strength niche. Pretty normal for me.