Making Over Menopause
4 minute read
I think we’re on the cusp of something, I just can’t remember what it is. There you go, there’s my first perimenopause joke. It’s the brain fog isn’t it? The symptoms are myriad and they’re coming at me fast. In fairness, I don’t really know if it’s perimenopause, exhaustion from juggling motherhood and work or just the pandemic, because like lots of things concerning women, the men who would fund the research into any of them seem not to be arsed.
But those men, I feel, are missing a trick. What we need to do is reframe menopause and to do that we need to market it heavily. Remember in the early 2000s when everyone was obsessed with harnessing the power of the pink pound? It was like a sudden realisation that gay people had money too and they liked to spend it! We need that but for women over 40 who are so confused about what’s happening to their bodies that they’ll spend untold amounts of money on the human equivalent of those cooling pads, you can buy for overheated dogs to sleep on. In fact, I’d like one of those right now.
Remember Samantha in that god awful Sex and the City movie where they went to Dubai and she ate hummus by the spoonful to keep her symptoms at bay when her bag of supplements was confiscated. Her panic and fear at what might happen to her over a four-day break were one of the first examples of a menopausal woman I had ever seen in the media and it did a pretty good job of playing up to the crazy lady stereotypes.
Not long after that, in one of my first media jobs, I heard a senior male executive describe a woman who was neither particularly emotional nor I think old enough, as a ‘hysterical woman going through the change’. Men in their 40s referring to women as going through the change are just the same as men in their 20s asking if we’re on the rag when all we’ve done is express an opinion. Our menstrual cycle is always the stick they use to beat us with when we dare to step out of line.
But it’s time we took ownership of the narrative and reframe women on the cusp of menopause as heroes. By the time we reach it we’ve survived on average 30 years of monthly bleeds, hormonal rollercoasters and men telling us to smile.
I bet you wouldn’t smile if you were trying to get through the day with cramps that could fell The Rock and just four slightly crushed Solpadine you miraculously found at the end of your handbag.
There’s a lot of discussion about what might happen if men had to endure periods/pregnancy/wearing a skirt in Coppers… but I genuinely think that if they had to live through a menstrual cycle they would each be awarded a free sun holiday and a congratulatory poem from Michael D on the day they reached menopause.
What we need now is a rebranding. Maybe it’s a TV programme hosted by Gok Wan and Trinny Woodall where perimenopausal women are whisked away for massages, long weekends drinking prosecco cocktails on the Amalfi coast and a good cathartic cry, and are released back to the world wearing gorgeous clothes from level two in Brown Thomas, sporting fabulous earrings and a HRT patch covered in diamantes on their upper arms. As Gok would say, fabulous.
Menopause needs to be normalised. We’re getting there albeit slowly with periods, but we need the same momentum behind what happens when that phase of our lives ends. It’s spoken about so little that lots of women think that something is seriously wrong when they become symptomatic during perimenopause because it’s nigh on impossible to find any literature about what all the symptoms actually are.
There are a few things we need. More women in politics for one. The fact that Helen McEntee will be the first minister to take maternity leave in Ireland is shameful. It’s 2021 for the love of Brigid. We need women in the room when decisions are being made so that the needs of women, you know 51% of the population, are met. We need women-centred healthcare where there is research money pumped into things like post-partum hair loss. Seriously, have you ever heard a hair restoration specialist speak about that? No, you haven’t but I bet you can picture Wayne Rooney’s hair transplant in your mind’s eye! And we need to normalise periods and the menopause. We could start with free sanitary products and build up to period leave at work.
Women are born, 12 or so years later their body changes so dramatically that it sheds its interior lining every 28 days. That lasts for 30 or 35 years and then it changes again. This time it removes the oestrogen that protects our bones and affects the reproductive tract, the urinary tract, the heart and blood vessels, bones, breasts, skin, hair, mucous membranes, pelvic muscles, and the brain. Wow. Menopausal women are not crazy, they are warrior women at war. I am a survivor hear my cry. Give me my medal. Let Gok Wan pour me champagne and tell me I’m beautiful!
Jennifer Stevens, April 2021
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