Am I alone in noticing that mid life women and our hormonal travails are trending right now? Those of us of a certain age are being digitally stalked by peddlers of articles, podcasts and the like, constantly reminding us of our changing bodies and telling us how we should experience them. Of course it goes without saying that many of them infer judgement on the way we live our menopausal lives. For most of the summer I was pursued by the image of a middle aged woman resolutely carrying her surf board on a beach, with long, flowing (greyish) locks and a look of single-minded determination, mysteriously free of any sign of perspiration despite the fact that she is of a certain age and clad head to toe in a wet suit (with gloves). According to the Wall Street Journal, purveyor of this motivational image and a related article, there is a new “wave [pun intended?] of women step[ping] into their mid-century…” and they are “not going to do our 50s the way everyone’s telling us.” They are rewriting the rules, whilst resolutely ignoring the irony of breaking free of one set merely to replace them with another. They are learning lessons from the “killer whales” [I’m sure no bad taste pun intended] who, coincidentally, are the only mammal to share the menopause experience – an elite club indeed. As I don’t subscribe to the WSJ I am none the wiser as to what the new rules are, but the surfboard and the killer whale analogy imply that there’s lots of vigour and independence and man eating involved. If they include insight into how not to sweat copiously whilst wearing full-body neoprene, well, it might just be worth the subscription.
In the burgeoning menopause journalistic literature there are many strong opinions and some wishful thinking. Eva Wisemann wrote in the Guardian of her anticipation of the menopause and her words reminded me of first-time-pregnant women’s hopelessly optimistic birthing plans calling for no anaesthetic, some peppermint oil, whale - menopausal? - music and a back rub. Wisemann predicts of later life: “…when biology no longer defines a body by its potential to reproduce, a woman will find further equality in her relationships; a chance to explore her person-ness. There’s the falling away of vanity that some women report.” Ha! If only. My person-ness has experienced none of that nor – as far as I know - has any of my circle of co-menopausers. Many of them still look amazing (and work hard at it), whilst we all talk of our increasing invisibility and marginalization – hardly the language of equality. But like those killer whales, we’ll go down fighting.
If some menopausal women are freeing themselves of vanity, the media are constantly there to remind them of their folly: women’s bodies, even of the successful corporate type, are a matter for public discussion. “Men like my grey hair” was a quote emblazoned across the front page of Saturday’s Times: “But do you prefer me blonde?” Answers on an abusive Twitter thread please…Clarissa Farr, the outspoken former head teacher of an elite west London girls school, recently suggested that beauty (rather than grey hair) gives women an authority on corporate boards that they might not otherwise have. Photos of smart, well-known, well-dressed and thin corporate women were reproduced to illustrate the point. Leaving aside the shocking neglect that this implies of everything else women have to offer, she is right that how they look is an additional pressure men just don’t encounter. The likes of Justin Trudeau and Gavin Patterson – OK you may have to Google him but you’ll see what I mean – truly are the exception in the male corporate world. Women are often encouraged to resist the pressure, which is challenging when relentlessly faced with images of powerful thinness and the associated message that this is how you have to look if you want to matter after a certain age. A recent Guardian article by Jia Tolentino suggests that modern feminism reinforces ideas of the perfect woman: “Today’s ideal woman is of a type that coexists easily with feminism in its current market-friendly and mainstream form. This sort of feminism has organized itself around being as visible and appealing to as many people as possible; it has greatly over-valorized women’s individual success. Feminism has not eradicated the tyranny of the ideal woman but, rather, has entrenched it and made it trickier.” The article’s premise is that feminism has lost its way, valuing the success of high profile individual, beautiful women over structural societal change to improve the lot of all women. The position of glamorous women as market assets is reinforced at the expense of collective morality and structural change.
Societal change is, encouragingly, the focus of some of the more recent menopausal journalism, but the personal cost of this push is also high. Well- known (again, mainly very glamorous) women talk openly about their hot flushes (Kay Burley’s magnificent reference to them as “power surges” has been added to my arsenal of coping mechanisms). Menopause cafés are springing up all over the place where people can meet in an “accessible, respectful and confidential” place to talk about, well, their menopause. The Labour party’s shadow equalities minister is suggesting that companies should train their employees about the menopause (I’ll leave you to imagine that for a moment) whilst menopausal women would be entitled to work flexibly. And why is this a high price? Well, perhaps precisely because at the time when women at last feel they can shed some of the hackneyed gender-related constraints – mainly around menstruation, child-bearing and all the related leakiness and hormones that are used to characterise us – lo and behold we are once again being defined by them.
Whilst not knocking any of these initiatives, women should also be free to choose another path. Hormonal changes are in the end a normal part of the ageing process, and perhaps they don’t need to be so absolutely pathologized and used to corral us into a group with which we may not identify. There’s a lot of research suggesting that generational identifiers are greatly exaggerated. Why should menopausal women be less diverse? I might want to talk (sometimes quite disrespectfully) about this time in my life in a loud bar over several glasses of wine - and to hell with my menopausally enhanced hangover - but most of all I prefer not to be viewed through a single lens. We are so much more than our age and our hormones despite society’s desire to characterise women entirely in relation to them. “Feeling a bit hormonal are you, love?” is a phrase I hope will disappear from my life along with the sanitary equipment. I reserve the right to break into a sweat without it being a badge of my menopause. After all, the biggest sweat patches I see remain on the armpits of men. I also want to continue to care about how I look without it being considered a crime against “proper” feminism.
Sometimes labels can get in the way of what we really need. And what I think would serve women of all ages well is good information without judgement and a sympathetic work environment. We shouldn’t need to train our managers about the menopause, just as we shouldn’t need to train them on how to deal with severe menstrual pain, miscarriage, chronic conditions, bereavement, depression and all the other health and personal issues that can affect how we work. Women also deserve decent health care so that if we feel unwell or unusually anxious we can get the best possible treatment, which might be more than a 10 minute slot with a GP who looks at a woman’s age and tells her what she is feeling is either menstruation-related or the menopause. Our European female counterparts frequently have their own gynaecologist; it is a national scandal that most British women never encounter one. It is also a scandal that women are routinely prescribed potentially addictive anxiety drugs when other treatments such as talking therapies might be much more effective in dealing with their problems, to which hormonal changes may only be one contributing factor.
In the end, we are all the bundle of our biology and mixed feelings and paradoxes that are an inherent part of the human condition. The recent push to force menopausal women to choose between the camp of structural change for a better menopause for all and to hell with society’s pressures to look good –v- the camp of I still want to look fetching in a pair of Sweaty Betty leggings and go to the gym, further confuses and divides us. It’s possible to want both.
Simone De Beauvoir famously said that “one is not born but becomes a woman”. We are human beings first and all humans sweat and all (or most) humans suffer at some point in their lives. It shouldn’t be that difficult to open a window or turn up the air con or make an appointment with a qualified medical specialist when help is needed. Like with everything else, we need to create an open, listening environment where people who are struggling feel able to talk and be heard without being categorised or judged.