The Spice Girls icon is opening up about anxiety, sleepless nights, beauty rituals and why the most important transformation of her life has nothing to do with the stage.

The topics that come up when the Spice Girls get together have changed. World tours and album campaigns have given way to something more personal, more present and, for Mel B, more worth talking about openly. Menopause is now at the center of those conversations, and she is not treating it as something to get through quietly.

At 50, Mel B is navigating a stage of life that affects millions of women and is still, somehow, discussed mostly in hushed tones. She has decided that is not good enough. The physical discomfort, the anxiety, the depression that can accompany hormonal shifts during this period are real, and the gap between how a woman might look on the outside and what she is actually experiencing on the inside is wider than most people acknowledge.

Her position is straightforward. Looking fine is not the same as feeling fine, and treating them as equivalent does women no favors.

What Mel B actually believes about beauty

Her philosophy on appearance has moved a long way from the Spice Girls era, when peach lipstick and heavy dark eyeliner were non-negotiable. The look has softened. The thinking behind it has deepened. She is more likely now to pull her hair into space buns to keep it away from her farm animals than to style it for anyone’s approval, and she finds something genuinely freeing in that.

What she returns to consistently is the idea that confidence does more for how a person looks than any product applied from the outside. That is not a dismissal of skincare or beauty rituals. It is a reordering of priorities. The outer work matters less if the inner foundation is not there.

She also looks back on the Spice Girls years with some candor about what they did not know then. Hydration, moisturizing, taking the makeup off at the end of the night. These were not things anyone around them was emphasizing, and she wishes they had been.

The rituals that actually help her now

Sleep was the first thing she had to reckon with honestly. Four hours used to feel like enough, or at least manageable. It is not, and she knows that now. Six or seven hours has made a measurable difference in how she functions and how she feels, and she treats that time as non-negotiable rather than aspirational.

Water with electrolytes is a daily practice. LED light therapy and regular sauna sessions are part of her routine, as are ice baths. None of this is new to the wellness conversation, but what Mel B brings to it is specificity about why these things matter more now, during menopause, than they did at earlier points in her life.

Meditation has been with her the longest. She started the practice at 19 and has kept it through fame, upheaval and everything in between. During a period as disorienting as menopause, having something that grounds her, that creates stillness in the middle of whatever else is happening, has been more valuable than she could have predicted when she started.

Menopause, community and what she wants other women to know

What Mel B keeps coming back to is that women should not be navigating this alone or in silence. Her Spice Girls bandmates are going through versions of the same experience, and that shared reality has made the conversations between them both more honest and more useful. Having people around who understand what you are actually describing, without you having to justify or minimize it, changes how the experience feels.

She has also become a global ambassador for Revive Collagen, which recently launched a supplement line aimed specifically at women managing menopause. Her investment in that work reflects a broader commitment to making practical support more visible and more accessible for women in this stage of life.

The larger point she is making is not complicated. Menopause is hard. It deserves to be talked about directly, supported seriously and met with the same resources and attention as any other significant health experience. Women who are going through it are not being dramatic. They are dealing with something real, and they should not have to pretend otherwise.