This Was Supposed to Be Endo’s Big Moment. What Happened?

It got popular the way a lot of things do: celebrities and social media. There was Halsey on Instagram, posting, “For those of you who have followed this battle of mine...you know the extremes to which it can be mentally exhausting and physically painful....I’m in total agony right now.” Alexa Chung wrote about how much it “sucks.” Lena Dunham described it as something “eating me from the inside.” Julianne Hough hid the “emotional trauma” from loved ones. Sarah Hyland called it “one of the most painful things I’ve dealt with.” So much star power and yet...nobody cared. Well, not nobody: Regular women cared—a lot. Especially those who have endometriosis and so many others who suspect they do. In 2018, “What is endometriosis?” was a top trending health question on Google (beat out only by the keto diet and ALS, another disease that has benefited from famous people speaking out on social). #EndoWarrior became a thing, used hundreds of thousands of times. There were fancy fundraising balls. A worldwide march. It was the kind of high-wattage awareness that often leads to better treatments, big breakthroughs, and major cash being spent to find a cure. Just like it has for conditions like Parkinson’s and breast cancer. “In the congressional committees, sometimes I see eye-rolling from men when we start talking about women’s issues,” says Representative Brenda Lawrence (D-Michigan), cochair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus. “We are fighting constantly to try to resolve funding around women’s issues like endometriosis.”