How the menopause is having a MeToo moment
The menopause, once barely mentioned – and even then sotto voce – is having a rebrand. That’s right: midlife women are standing up and declaring solidarity with one another at the end of their fertile years. It seems you can’t glance at social media, magazines or even the TV without coming up against a hormonal wash of frustration, exhortation or hard sell around what used to be squeamishly called ‘the change’.
I went through the menopause at around 50, which is 13 years ago. I was editing the biggest midlife women’s magazine in the UK but, rather incredibly, the subject was largely absent from its pages. I told a friend I was thinking of leading a campaign about this taboo and she went pale. ‘Please don’t – not if you want to have sex with your husband again!’ How the tide has turned. I first noticed the shift when Mariella Frostrup presented a BBC One prime-time programme called The Truth About the Menopause in 2018. Not only was it upfront about the downsides of the end of fertility – mood swings, anxiety, brain fog, loss of libido, sleeplessness, dry skin, vaginal dryness, all listed on a white board as she polled women in the street – but it also scientifically tested a range of methods for combating its effects. To have a presenter at the top of her career stand up and say, ‘Why are we not talking about this?’ was monumental.
But Mariella was just part of a wave of action. Britpop survivor Meg Mathews’ Instagram page, MegsMenopause, now has 39,000 followers; Make Menopause Matter is a campaign that focuses on GPs being properly trained in this area; and politicians and businesses are making noises about bringing in ‘menopause leave’ – an issue that’s gathering pace since menopausal women are now the fastest growing demographic in the workforce, yet one in four consider leaving her job due to menopausal symptoms.
Menopause cafés have sprung up around the country, inviting women to share their experiences over a cup of coffee, while earlier this year, London’s Barbican Centre played host to Mid Life, a witty play about three menopausal women exploring ‘the frustration, freedom and possibility of these middle years’. There are apps such as Clarity that focus on overcoming problems with sleep and anxiety, while Become is a clothing company using Anti-Flush Technology? to help with hot flushes. Gwyneth Paltrow, Gillian Anderson, Yasmin Le Bon and Angelina Jolie have all spoken about their own experiences. If they can talk about this embarrassing, isolating, ageing subject, then anyone can.
Dr Ginni Mansberg, the Australian author of one of two books called The M Word published this year (the other is by London GP Dr Philippa Kaye), believes that the menopause’s current ‘Me Too moment’ is being driven by a number of factors: ‘Women of 50 are “younger” now as their lives will last longer. The feminists that came before us made us more confident, and unlike many of our mothers – and certainly our grandmothers – we are educated and have jobs as good as those of our male partners. We have our own money and have stopped carrying angst about what others think of us, and we have market power, too.’
I remember when the original #MeToo movement started: the hairs literally stood up on my arms with the realisation that an army of women were, finally, speaking out about the harassment so many of us had experienced. I have two daughters and I felt thrilled that their generation was declaring that they were not going to stand for any level of sexual harassment and violence. It’s heartening to think that this spirit of defiance is now spreading to other vital aspects of women’s lives, and that their decades away menopause won’t be dealt with in hushed tones as mine was. As Dr Mansberg writes in her book: ‘Finally in the era of Time’s Up, women are standing up for themselves and each other. An unexpected side revolution has been the desire to take back the power around the menopause. Let’s all be a part of that movement.’
Former Red magazine deputy editor Saska Graville was blindsided by her own ignorance of the effects of perimenopause, the period of a woman’s life when her ovaries begin to produce less oestrogen. ‘I’d heard about hot flushes, but I thought that wouldn’t happen until I was much older. I didn’t know that the perimenopause can start in your 40s – and sometimes earlier – and I didn’t expect the anxiety, the inability to function, the feelings of dread,’ says Saska.
After a year of asking her GP for help, she was finally given a blood test, which showed she was heading into menopause. ‘Two weeks on HRT and I felt infinitely better. If, after all my time spent working on a women’s magazine, even I was unaware of what was happening, then there was clearly an education and awareness job that needed to be done.’ In a bid to fill that gap, Saska has launched MPowered Women, a site devoted to informing women what they might experience and a range of lifestyle and medical options they could pursue.
The reluctance of her doctor to prescribe HRT struck Saska as outrageous, which was true of another woman I spoke to, Alexa, a college lecturer from Surrey. She got in touch via my therapy platform welldoing.org, where she pleaded, ‘What about a therapist for the menopause?’ Alexa felt swept aside at every turn when she sought help for her mood swings. She was finally prescribed HRT through a Harley Street specialist – and got a therapist too. ‘Lots of women really struggle – why would we not share that and help each other? We are stronger together.’
It certainly seems that the loud, proud feminism revival of the past few years, combined with social media and our recent appetite for sharing personal stories, have brought the menopause out of the shadows.
My own attitude lines up best with the high-powered businesswoman written for Kristin Scott Thomas by the Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Remember them sitting in the cocktail bar in series two? ‘Women are born with pain built in, period pain, sore boobs, childbirth. We have pain on a cycle for years and years and then the menopause comes and it is the most wonderful f— king thing in the world.’
How’s that? Well, campaigners and medics notwithstanding, for many women I know the menopause comes, and then it’s gone. You’re left without periods (good) and with the joy of having sex with no chance of getting pregnant (phew). There’s a liberating wind that blows through your beauty routine, your wardrobe and your sense of self, as fashion blogger Alyson Walsh, 56, recently wrote on thatsnotmyage.com: ‘This is what we look like, this is what we wear, get over it. We do not have to dress a certain way because we are a certain age. With my casually glamorous clothes, flat runaround shoes and natural, greyish hair, I look completely different to the way my mum looked in her 50s.’
In my case, fresh out of the menopause, I started a business at 57 – something I wouldn’t have dreamt of doing at 37, or even 47. That loss of self-consciousness – that feeling of being watched and judged – means that women like me suddenly feel they can do anything. Long may it last.
Louise Chunn is the founder of therapist platform welldoing.org. ‘The M Word’, by Dr Ginni Mansberg (Murdoch, ￡12.99) is out now