“I’m fine” is one of the easiest lies to tell. Two words that can conceal exhaustion, anxiety, grief, overwhelm and the quiet pressure of holding everything together.
“I’m fine.”
It is one of the most familiar answers in the English language and one of the most deceptive.
Women say it at work, at home, on the school run, over dinner, in WhatsApp messages and in passing conversations with people who genuinely want to know how they are. Sometimes it is true. Often, it is simply the quickest way to avoid explaining the weight that sits behind it.
There is always something else that needs attention. A deadline. A child. A parent. A relationship. A household. A career. A list that seems to regenerate the moment one thing is crossed off. When so much of life depends on continuing to function, admitting that everything feels too much can seem almost inconvenient.
So the feelings are folded away. There is also the fear of being judged. Of appearing weak. Difficult. Dramatic. Ungrateful. Incapable. Women are often taught, explicitly or otherwise, that resilience means coping quietly. That strength looks like carrying on. That vulnerability should be carefully rationed. And so “I’m fine” becomes armour.
That instinct can feel even more complicated when emotions are affected by hormonal changes. PMS can heighten anxiety, sadness, irritability or vulnerability, yet acknowledging that can open the door to another form of dismissal: the suggestion that someone is “just hormonal”. But hormones do not make emotions imaginary.
That is what makes Lancôme’s I’m Fine initiative feel so relevant. Developed with the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, the campaign encourages women to check in with their mental wellbeing and recognise possible early signs of anxiety and depression. Its value lies not in pretending that a campaign can fix the pressures women face, but in challenging the deeply ingrained instinct to hide them.
The research shared by Lancôme and Ipsos is difficult to ignore. 80% of women surveyed said they had told someone “I’m fine” when they were not. 72% said they regretted hiding how they truly felt. More than 60% said they find it difficult to speak openly about their mental wellbeing. Those figures reveal just how normalised emotional concealment has become.
They represent the women who cry in bathrooms and return to meetings composed. The women answering emails through anxiety. The women caring for everyone else while quietly running on empty. The women who become so accomplished at appearing fine that the people around them stop thinking to ask twice.
The I’m Fine campaign brings together Demi Moore, Christy Turlington, Zoë Saldaña and Vanessa Kirby to share personal experiences, while IMFINE.COM offers the GAD-7 anxiety and PHQ-8 depression self-assessments alongside expert-led resources and stories from other women.
These tools are not diagnoses, nor are they substitutes for professional care but they can create something that busy lives rarely allow: a moment of interruption.
A pause long enough to ask: How am I, really?
It is a deceptively powerful question. Too often, women wait for distress to become impossible to ignore before deciding it deserves attention. Anxiety is reframed as stress. Exhaustion becomes “just being busy”. Sadness is blamed on hormones. Overwhelm is treated as something that should be managed more efficiently.
Everything is explained away until reaching out for help begins to feel disproportionate but no one should have to reach breaking point before they are allowed to acknowledge that something is wrong.
There is strength in recognising distress before it becomes a crisis. In giving feelings a name. In allowing somebody else to see what has been hidden. In understanding that needing support is not evidence of failure.
That is where the real significance of I’m Fine lies, in questioning a version of resilience that requires silence.
Acknowledgement does not make every problem disappear. It does not immediately remove the pressure, fix the relationship, calm the anxiety or change the circumstances but it can be the point at which minimising stops and support becomes possible.
“I’m fine” will probably remain part of everyday language but perhaps we can become a little less comfortable accepting it at face value, from ourselves and from the women around us.
The next time somebody asks how we are, perhaps we might risk telling the truth and the next time a woman tells us she is not fine, we will believe her.
