Spice Girl Emma Bunton and her partner, Jade Jones, reveal how menopause affected their relationship - and sex life.
Mel C’s recent autobiography, Who I Am, surely put any lingering doubts to bed. When the Spice Girls sang, “I really, really, really wanna zig-a-zig-ah” on their global 1996 hit Wannabe, they definitely meant the joys of carefree young sex. Emma “Baby Spice” Bunton and her husband, the singer Jade Jones, have been thinking about that quite a bit recently.
“My desire, my libido, whatever you want to call it, it went and that really worried me,” Bunton says. “Even after 24 years together Jade and I still really fancy each other, but instead of acting on it, it was more like, ‘Shall we watch the last episode of Succession?’ Or just ‘zzzzzz’ rather than ripping each other’s clothes off. And that fading desire is a big, big shock for a woman.”
Jade Jones is listening to this very carefully.
“I suffered, didn’t I, babe?” he interjects suddenly. “I was like, ‘What’s happening?’ I had to be patient. But then Emma got help and, boy, she came back so strong.”
Jones is lying on a double bed in a photo studio in central London. Bunton is perched on its edge.
“You suffered?” she asks, momentarily baffled.
“Yeah, but not for long, I said. You came back to me. You got help and you came back strong, man. The passion came home.”
“Yes, it did, and you were very patient,” Bunton says and they high-five. “You were an absolute hero.”
I don’t think I’ve ever met two people more in love than Bunton and Jones. They’ve been together for more than two decades, albeit with a short gap, but this feels like their fourth date. They gaze at each other and nod supportively whenever the other speaks. And as well as “hero”, Bunton calls her husband “babe”, while he returns the favour and also refers to her as (deep breath) my queen, my best friend, my confidante, my rock, my beauty, my soul mate. There’s also one mention of “bubba”, which, coincidentally, is also the name of the family Cavapoochon (a mix of Cavalier King Charles spaniel, toy poodle and bichon frise).
“Even our friends get annoyed the way we are with each other — they roll their eyes or say, ‘Get a room, you two,’ " Bunton says.
They tell me the Times photographer asked them to stand slightly apart for their pictures and even this was quite an effort.
“It was cool, but not what we usually do,” Jones adds.
In a way that’s what we are here to discuss: the Bunton/Jones chemistry and how it has got them through her experience with menopause. These days a lot more women are openly discussing the sometimes horrible physical and mental effects of their oestrogen levels tapering off in midlife, but not many couples talk about it as something they’re facing together. Bunton and Jones do. Sometimes they make it sound like a holiday that went a bit wrong and they laugh. Other times Bunton speaks about its personal impact and she seems bereft.
“If your partner is not on your side, I can’t imagine how you get through it,” she says. “I hope we can tell other women it will be okay.”
The pair met when Bunton was 21 and enjoying the first heady rush of fame with the Spice Girls. Jones was 19 and the lead singer in pop/R&B group Damage, who managed to sell a not-too-shabby four million records. That was in 1998 and, though their mutual attraction was immediate, there was a brief hiatus during which Bunton dated the footballer Rio Ferdinand (and, reportedly, the actor Leonardo DiCaprio and the American singer Justin Timberlake). But by 2001 she had written a song about Jones called What Took You So Long? and they were back together.
They have two children — Beau, 15, and Tate, 11 — and the couple finally married in 2021. But it was around this time, during the Covid-19 lockdowns, that Bunton felt something wasn’t right.
The family, plus Bunton’s mother, Pauline, were living at their home in suburban Barnet, north London. At first it was idyllic. Bunton and Jones home-schooled their kids — she covered English and Jones did maths. In the afternoons they’d do a Joe Wicks workout or organise a family sports day in the garden. The house has its own bar, so in the evenings the adults would hang out there.
“It’s not a Del Boy Trotter bar,” Jones informs me, slightly defensively. “We don’t have pineapples everywhere.”
“Covid was terrible for a lot of people. But for me, being immersed in family life was heaven,” Bunton adds. “That’s when we seriously talked about having a third child. But pretty quickly I got overtaken by this terrible dread. I was anxious about everything, even going to the shops or having a work meeting on Zoom.”
“Emma is prone to anxiety. I think the music industry did that to her,” Jones says. “She worries a lot about being papped on holiday or just followed by strangers. But this was different. It was amplified and applied to very ordinary things.”
At 47, Bunton is the youngest Spice Girl. But all this happened when she was only 44 and so, when her symptoms got worse, she consulted her bandmates and other friends.
“I spoke to all my girls, my mum and then this amazing doctor, Louise Newsom [a menopause expert who created Balance, a free app that helps women log and recognise menopause symptoms], and pretty soon understood I was perimenopausal.” This is the prelude to actual menopause, which is defined as a year without having a period. “My mum had been through early menopause when she was around 40 and early onset can be hereditary. That was just the beginning, though. You have to understand your own hormone profile and get help that suits you.”
Menopause can lead to all manner of symptoms including mood swings, sleep deprivation, brain “fog”, osteoporosis, hot flushes, loss of libido, vaginal dryness and itchy skin, but it affects all women differently.
“For me it was like managing my kids’ puberty in reverse,” Bunton says. “They would be moody or cry for no reason and ask me, ‘Mum, why am I feeling like this?’ Well, I was doing exactly the same. It felt as if I was going through reverse puberty and it was frightening.”
As well as a temporary loss of libido, Bunton suffered badly with brain fog.
“Some days I thought I was going mad — I’d be crying or forget what me and the family did the previous day or I’d put my car keys in the fridge.”
“It’s hard to see someone you love think they’re losing their mind,” Jones says. “As a husband, you have to step up. Read books. Do research.”
Bunton went on to HRT (hormone replacement therapy). Her moods and mental focus stabilised. Her libido came back. But menopause does not have a single fix. Hormones change, so she had to look at other factors too.
“I started eating more healthily. Blueberries and raspberries for breakfast. Avocados for lunch. Vitamins and magnesium supplements every morning. And then there was Jade reading up and suggesting things. I think it’s fair to say he sometimes understood what was going on better than I did.”
“I said, ‘Right, exercise is really important,’ and we got a dog,” Jones says. “We stopped sitting around in the garden so much and started walking in the woods. And on days when Emma was really struggling, it was my job to be funny or silly or just to listen.”
It would be wrong to depict Jones researching and then “mansplaining” menopause to his wife, but his contribution comes up again and again. He is from a large family — the youngest of 11 children — and has six older sisters.
“You get attuned to how women are feeling in a family with so many strong females,” he says. “You get used to trying to solve emotional problems.”
Aged 25, Bunton had been diagnosed with endometriosis and thought she might not be able to have children. Jones hit the books then too.
“That diagnosis was devastating, because being a mum has always been an absolute priority for me,” Bunton recalls. “More than awards or playing stadiums, having children was my dream. So it was awful to contemplate not being able to. Jade calmed me down and explained the realities.”
And when they had their first child, Beau, in 2007, Bunton struggled with breastfeeding and Jones researched strategies to combat the painful condition mastitis (where breasts become inflamed or swollen).
“There are a lot of different grips out there for feeding a baby and I got her to change to a ‘basketball grip’, which really helped,” he recalls proudly.
“I say this with all love,” Bunton adds. “Jade does like to do a deep dive into these things and he’ll come up with absolutely reams of information. Sometimes I’d have to say, ‘Thank you, darling, but I don’t need a whole encyclopaedia.’ "
“Yeah, but I’m a sponge. I like knowledge,” he counters firmly.
The Bunton/Jones household sounds like it was an intense place to be during lockdown. Pauline Bunton — a black belt karate instructor who famously once went out on the town with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and got a tattoo — was advising her daughter to manage her hormones. Meanwhile, Emma was under some pressure to produce that third child. Jones really wanted it, but so did Beau and Tate. In fact, both children put “a sibling” at the top of their Christmas lists and at one stage Beau told Emma, ‘You need to go into the bedroom, have sex and have a child.’ "
But as lockdown wore on, Bunton cooled on the idea.
“I can be pretty indecisive. One day I’m still like, ‘Okay, let’s try,’ and then immediately I’ll feel, ‘No, I don’t think my body can handle it.’ "
“No two ways about it,” Jones recalls. “There were some days when Emma was upset, the kids were kicking off and I was feeling, ‘Will someone please tell me what the hell is happening around here?’ "
We are talking the same week that Al Pacino announced he has become a father again at 83 and Robert De Niro, 79, has welcomed his seventh. All this speaks to a fundamental gender difference: men remain fertile longer than women.
“We are lucky in that respect,” Jones agrees.
Did he grieve not having his third baby?
“No. You face these things together. And we haven’t given up on the idea altogether even now.”
Bunton is nodding and laughing at this. She puts a hand on his knee.
“My friends do say to me sometimes: where did you find him? When they are suffering with symptoms, often their partners will just say, ‘Why are you crying again?’ Or, ‘Pull yourself together’, and that’s because some men think they have to provide solutions and answers when really they don’t. You can’t fix it. You just have to try to understand. And Jade has been a total hero.”
Bunton’s initial HRT prescription worked for a while, but some of the anxiety recently returned. She hopes a new HRT cocktail might put her in the mood.
“It’s complex, because another reason I’ve been an emotional wreck is because I can feel my kids growing up. Beau is doing GCSEs this summer and is not quite so cuddly and needy anymore, and I find that so hard. Spice Girl or not, I’m so mumsy. I need to be needed and I’m struggling with the idea of separation.”
This is supposed to be an interview but it’s starting to feel a bit like a counselling session. I’m wondering how this loved-up couple can resolve their issues around conception, but my question comes out wrong.
“What has to happen for Emma to get pregnant?” I ask.
Jones is on the bed looking suddenly shocked and appalled.
“I thought you said you had kids yourself — are you saying you don’t know how the process works?”
With 100 million album sales to their credit, the Spice Girls are the biggest-selling girl group of all time. Whatever you think of the music, from the moment Baby Spice stole the cap off a homeless man, Sporty backflipped down a dining table and Scary jiggled her thighs together while singing “zig-a-zig ah” in the Wannabe video, the idea of “girl power” gained extraordinary traction.
When he met them in 1997, South African president Nelson Mandela called the occasion one of the greatest moments of his life, and at the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics they were touted as a quintessentially British phenomenon alongside Mary Poppins, James Bond and the Queen.
And yet the band’s premonitions of future womanhood were always there. In their 1997 movie, Spiceworld, Bunton sounds full of dread when she asks, “Do you think I’m always going to be seen as Baby Spice? Even when I’m 30?”
Aged 47, she is still proud of the “Baby” tattoo on her hip. But recently, for the first time, she has had thoughts about whether this persona suits a mature woman.
“Right from the start, I was the baby,” she reflects. “I was the youngest and the last to join. And when I got into that Fiat Uno and Geri drove me to the house [while developing their act the girls lived together in Maidenhead, Berkshire], I remember she never once took her eyes off me in the rear-view mirror. I thought she was going to crash the car and get us all killed. I was happy to be Baby, but now for the first time I feel a bit anxious about the name. I worry people will look at me in the street and think, ‘Is that Baby Spice? Blimey, she’s looking so old.’ "
Nevertheless, it looks like there is going to be another Spice Girls reunion. The long-rumoured appearance at Glastonbury this month did not happen; however, all five former members are in discussions regarding an anniversary tour. Yes, even Victoria Beckham, who bowed out after that 2012 Olympic closing ceremony, seems to be up for it.
“We are all talking about it, which is just so exciting,” Bunton says. “There are a few anniversaries coming up.” Next year it will be 30 years since the group, then called Touch, first formed. In 2026, it will be 30 years since they released Wannabe. “And I also truly believe that we will one day play Glastonbury. Everyone wants it to happen and it will.”
Jones is shooting her quizzical looks.
“Do you think I shouldn’t be talking about this?” Bunton asks him.
“Not my call.” He shrugs a little nervously.
When the Spice Girls first toured in the 90s, their backstage area was just like any pop group’s. They had plentiful booze and even an on-site tattoo artist and someone else doing piercings. When they next hit the road things will be very different.
“There will be nappies and sweets and also we will have a ‘Zen room’ to gather our thoughts, a family room and probably a lot of herbal tea,” Bunton says.
She will supply the nappies from her company, Kit & Kin, which makes eco-friendly ones plus a lot of hygiene products, including hand sanitiser and dishwasher tablets. Bunton says her nappy-rash balm is so effective, David Beckham uses it as a hand moisturiser.
She says working on this side hustle has become her “third baby”, and when she talks about all the different hygiene products she sounds slightly possessed. Is this a manifestation of her anxiety?
“Maybe, but it’s good energy. In the pandemic I was genuinely frightened about death, and I really want to do something positive in the world. Our nappy subscriptions are raising money for school transport and uniforms in places like Guatemala, Kenya and Zambia, and to me that is a very worthwhile legacy.”
Right now, Bunton says, she feels okay. Today is a good day. She and Jones have carved out a couple of hours to go and have lunch together.
“I feel great — and that’s the weird thing about menopause. Some days I know objectively that life is fine and I am very lucky, yet I feel so tearful. But we are at the mercy of hormones and the sooner women realise that, the quicker they can move on.”
And that’s her message. Women should dispel all the mystery and myths around menopause, take appropriate nutritional, lifestyle or medical measures and live confidently.
However, I recently spoke to Bunton’s friend Amanda Holden, who promotes a collagen product that can be particularly helpful around the time of menopause, yet she refused to mention the word itself.
“Wow,” Bunton says. “Well, all I can say is that everyone has a different attitude. When I struggled with breastfeeding I felt there was a lack of information and even maybe a bit of shame around that. Maybe it’s the same with menopause. I don’t see how women can get through it alone. I’m so grateful to heroes like Davina McCall out there shining a light into the darkness. Otherwise it’s a lonely road.”
“I’m so proud of how you’ve handled all this,” Jones tells her.
“Thanks, babe,” Bunton says. “I really couldn’t do it without you.”
Written by: Michael Odell
© The Times of London