“I just feel like the women’s pain relief aisle has been so outdated.”
Before she was an advocate, before she was a producer, before she was launching a brand designed to revolutionize women’s pain relief, Corinne Foxx was a young woman curled on a bathroom floor, trying to understand what was happening to her body.
“Funny enough, my symptoms actually didn’t start with period symptoms,” she begins. Around 2017, what she thought were recurring urinary tract infections began disrupting her life. “I would have urgency, I’d have burning, it was all those typical UTI symptoms. I would go to urgent care, get a culture, and it would come back negative.”
Corinne Foxx in Pol’ Atteu.
Doctor after doctor shrugged. Her regular OB-GYN admitted, I don’t know what this is. Maybe try a urologist.
And so began the carousel.
At the same time, her periods were becoming unbearable. “I was crippled on the floor in the fetal position. I was nauseous. I remember getting cramps that were so bad that I thought to myself, I hope I faint or pass out, because at least there’ll be a brief moment of relief.”
What’s striking is not just the pain, but that she thought it was normal.
When a roommate found her on the bathroom floor and said, This is not normal, it was the first crack in the narrative she’d absorbed her entire life: that menstrual pain is simply something women endure.
“From all the education that I had up to that point, menstrual cycles were painful. That’s what we were taught to believe,” she says. “I never understood how much pain would be abnormal.”
Eventually, a deeply uncomfortable appointment with a male OB-GYN — one she never returned to — yielded the first whisper of a possible diagnosis: endometriosis. No explanation. No context. Just a suggestion to schedule surgery at the front desk.
“I remember just crying in my stirrups, feeling so alone.”
But that word — endometriosis — led her to Dr. Iris Kerin Orbuch, the Los Angeles specialist who would change her life.
“She draws these diagrams upside down for you,” Foxx recalls, smiling. “She explains how endo affects your organs. And just to have a doctor with the decency to sit with you and explain why you’re feeling this way was so relieving.”
On October 11, 2018, Foxx underwent excision surgery. “I remember waking up and seeing Dr. Kerin Orbuch’s face. She’s like an angel. She said, ‘You’re okay. We found endo.”
Validation, after years of dismissal.
“You go from months to years of being told either ‘I don’t know what this is,’ ‘This is normal,’ or ‘You’re making it up,’ to someone validating you. It was the most relieving feeling.”
She calls it a brand-new lease on life.
Corrine Foxx, Dr. Iris Kerin Orbuch, and fellow Endo-Warrior Courtney Ford.
To the outside world, Foxx’s career was on the rise. She had appeared in Sweet/Vicious and in the underwater survival thriller 47 Meters Down: Uncaged. She was balancing acting, modeling, and her role as co-host and DJ on Beat Shazam opposite her father, Jamie Foxx.
But behind the scenes, she was performing complex mental gymnastics just to show up.
“I would look at my shoot dates and then plan when my period was going to come,” she says. “Okay, that shoot day is going to be day two — that’s the worst day. I’m going to have to prepare. I’ll start taking Advil and Tylenol before because I need to be able to go to work.”
On 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, much of the filming took place submerged in a massive water tank. “Being in severe pain in an uncomfortable environment was extremely isolating,” she says. “You don’t feel like you can advocate for yourself. You don’t feel like you can justify asking for less work.”
View this post on Instagram
She pauses, then adds, “As women in general, we’re used to pushing through. Mental health, physical health — we show up and do what needs to be done.”
Endometriosis, she says, pushes you to your limits, both physically and emotionally. “I’ve always known I was very mentally strong. I was diagnosed with anxiety and PTSD when I was 14. But endometriosis really pushes you to what you can physically sustain.”
And yet, she showed up anyway. It made her realize she was strong in ways that she didn’t even realize.
Foxx grew up in the public eye. She made her first cameo on The Jamie Foxx Show at six and often accompanied her father on red carpets. But this chapter of her life shifted their relationship in a new way.
“There was definitely a lot of education for both of my parents,” she says. Her mother doesn’t have endometriosis. Her father had never heard of it before her diagnosis.
Through her surgeries — including a second procedure six years later when the disease had infiltrated her bladder — her dad learned alongside her.
“He’s like the biggest feminist ever,” she says, laughing. “Now he’s like, ‘Oh, I have even more to advocate for.’” When she hosted a screening in Los Angeles for the endometriosis documentary Below the Belt, on which she served as a producer, her entire family showed up. “My sisters were there. My dad was there. My mom was there.”
Her father didn’t just attend — he promoted, supported, amplified. In an industry where women’s health is still often whispered about, Jamie Foxx used his massive platform to stand beside his daughter.
For Corinne, that mattered. “For them to sit and hear these stories, not just mine, that was really special.”
She now speaks openly with her younger sisters, arming them with knowledge she never had at their age. “These are the symptoms. This is what we do.” Awareness, she believes, is generational protection.
Since speaking publicly about endometriosis, Foxx says her relationship with her audience has transformed. “It’s the best thing ever,” she says. “I’ve had so many friends get diagnosed. So many people online are desperate for connection.”
She laughs. “I honestly feel like I’m an endometriosis influencer.” The engagement is overwhelming and very telling. “It shows me that people are desperate to have these conversations.”
Her advice to women suffering in silence is simple and fierce: “If you’re in pain that’s keeping you from work or school or showing up in the world the way you want to, and you’re not getting answers — demand answers. You are your biggest advocate.”
That advocacy has taken a tangible form. In March, which is Endometriosis Awareness Month, Foxx will launch ELSE (weareelse.com), a modern pain-relief brand built around lidocaine patches, designed not to be hidden but to be worn proudly.
“You can’t take your heating pad with you,” she says. “But you can take lidocaine patches.”
The idea grew from her own desperation for relief and conversations with Dr. Kerin Orbuch about holistic pain management. “I’ve been really desperate for relief,” she says. “I’m really excited to give my own solution to the problem.”
Corinne Foxx in Pol’ Atteu.
