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Menopause? Bring it On! They Could Be the Best Years of Your Life
By Rachel Johnson, Mail Online
March 30, 2009
Friends who have got there before me are not exactly encouraging. When I ask them what the menopause is really like, they give me dark looks, say things like 'Just you wait' and shake their heads, which is terrifying - I mean, how bad can it be?
But then, there's such a steaming pile of negative assumptions out there about the 'change of life', is it any wonder that all of us are dreading it?
Menopause is certainly not a word you want to be associated with if it hasn't happened to you yet. When I was asked to write this piece, it was all I could do not to snap: 'Oh, so you think I'm a whiskery old trout do you?'
From the outset I wanted to make one thing crystal-clear. No, I have not yet entered that neighbourhood and do not expect to, thank you very much, for many more moons.
If the truth be known, though, I run with sweat most nights, especially between my boobs (my friends all talk about this a lot), so, frankly, the change could be just around the corner.
So why do we modern women fear it so?
Medically speaking, it's pretty straightforward - it means the cessation of monthly periods, which usually occurs, between the ages of 45 and 55. And yet the word 'menopause' has come to mean so much more.
There are tons of books about it, written by women as varied as Germaine Greer and Jenni Murray, and ancient medical texts called things like The Handbook of Uterine Therapeutics. But still, like me, no one really wants to think about it very much until it happens.
The reason we dread this inevitable stage in our lives is simple. We know - because we have eyes and ears - that modern society regards most post-fertile females with active distaste and condescension.
The media (sadly, no space here to descant on the way that women over 50 disappear off the telly to make room for grizzled jowly men) is always rushing to bung red stickers on women whose eggs are past their sell-by date and place them high on the reduced-to-clear shelf.
I have no idea if Madonna has been through the change. But now she's past the big five-oh, everyone forgets that she's the biggest female star of all time and thinks its clever to call her a ridiculous old granny prancing about in fishnets.
As all women will attest, there is a huge difference between our biological age, the age we look and the age we feel (26 in my case). But society doesn't attend to these subtleties.
Despite the advances of HRT, Botox, Pilates, and upper arms toned by yoga, Western culture still tends to define women by one thing - if we're not menstruating, then we don't exist. Which brings us to the next curse of the menopause: the ageism and sexism directed towards middleaged women.
According to a new book on this unsexy subject by Louise Foxcroft, Hot Flushes, Cold Science - A History Of The Modern Menopause, the menopause is the origin of the double standard that runs right through life when it comes to women, men and age. For while a man's old age is a social thing, which starts with retirement, a woman's old age is tied to a biological process, which begins when she starts running out of eggs.
It doesn't matter a bean if a woman is stunningly beautiful, runs marathons without breaking sweat, has three children under the age of ten, the biceps of Michelle Obama and doesn't look a day over 35 - all of which is perfectly possible these days.
No, if her ovaries are shutting up shop, she's biologically old - whereas a man exactly the same age (the average woman hits the menopause at 51) is reverentially treated as if he's a Bordeaux in a very good year: mature, full-bodied, in his prime.
As Foxcroft points out: 'Even in our feminist era, if you think you are not defined by your reproductive potential, then look at society's emphasis on youth and beauty and how it despises signs of age.'
Think also of the phrases used to determine whether a female is still viable. She is either a 'dewy peach' or a 'withered old prune'.
No wonder, then, that there is a glut of self-help tomes telling women how to 'survive' this secret process, as if it is a battle against some sneaky cancerous enemy rather than a benign phase that all females will, at some time, face.
Did you know that men get menopausal, too?
A physician called George Corfe thought it occurred between the age of 49 and 70, and called it 'Life's Great Climacteric Epoch'.
The male list of symptoms includes depression, nervousness, flushes, sweats, insomnia, bad temper, fatigue, weight gain, lowered bone mineral density, poor concentration, decreased libido and erectile dysfunction. Only that when this happens to men, it does not render them worthless, unattractive or barren. It does not affect their social status. Or their ability to front nightly news programmes. Does it? Bah!
But enough's enough. Now, more than ever, it's time to address the imbalance of defining half the population by something as narrow as our reproductive potential.
As the generation of babyboomers-approach that stage in life, there's never been a wider or keener interest in restoring the status of the post-menopausal female.
No one's arguing that the menopause isn't a challenge. But as Foxcroft points out, the challenge has been misconstrued.
It's not night sweats, or the mood swings, or those strange bristly hairs that appear overnight on the chin that are the worst of it (though I can't say I am looking forward to any of that). It's the combined power of ageism, sexism and a raft of medico-cultural assumptions that the menopause is a disease which allows society to treat women past childbearing age as if there's something wrong with them.
Reading between the lines of Foxcroft's book, I think there is room for hope. As medicine, health and cosmetics improve, a woman aged 50 or so is not old, no more than men that age are; she's merely no longer as fertile as she was. Our monthly periods are only the metronome of our fertility - not our beauty and our vitality.
I take hope from one woman who posted her experience of the menopause on the internet as follows: 'I dreaded the menopause, expecting all kinds of horrific symptoms from sexual dysfunction to osteoporosis and instant haggery. To my surprise it just happened with very little problem, and I look much the same as I ever did.
'Sex is just the same, and the great thing is - no more bloody monthlies and no more wondering every month whether you might be pregnant. The children are grown up, I can do what I want. It's a sweet time for a woman.'
I'd like to sum all these positives up with some other M words.
First, Mamma Mia! - the hit movie that showed love at sunset is just as sweet as summer romance, and proved once and for all that there is a huge, global appetite for seeing women d'un certain age on screen. Expect many more movies of this empowering ilk.
The other significant M word is the menoporsche. Ever heard of it? Even if you haven't, I'm sure you will know living examples of it - men who get a second wind when they hit a certain milestone (usually when their hair has receded to the high-water mark) and start chasing girls young enough to be their daughters, buying Harley-Davidsons, wearing stone-washed denim etc etc.
And the great news according to Foxcroft is that women can have a meno-porsche, too. It's a myth that women lose interest in sex post-menopause, and too little is made of the 'surge in sexual response at this time', says Foxcroft.
General population surveys do not support the clinical view that the menopause adversely affects women's sexual health or enjoyment. Freedom from fear of pregnancy, after all, is a well-known aphrodisiac.
So no more mourning our past potential. No more grieving for all the other children I never had while I still could. No, let's all start looking on the bright side of the 'change of life' and stop approaching the menopause with trepidation.
One-third of Western women are in menopause at the moment. It's going to happen to us all.
So what you've got to think is: 'You've come a long way, baby, and it's not over yet!'
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