Opinion: Society is slowly waking up to the fact that there is more to menopause than hot flushes. It can be a turbulent time of life for many women.
It sounds like some kind of joke: what do Paula Bennett, Hilary Barry and Kate Rodger have in common? Not a lot you might think, other than being well-known Kiwi women in their fifties who have all hosted shows on TV.
And you would, of course, be quite right. Except there is another common denominator: they have all spoken out about their experience of menopause.
Bennett confided that she thought she was having a break-down. Barry described her experience as “hideous”. Rodger announced that she was drawing a metaphorical line in the sand: “I refuse to navigate these perilous menopausal seas solo as a hot, sweaty castaway washed up on the desert island of middle age.”
It was three decades ago now that renowned feminist Germaine Greer published her tome on the matter, The Change. For a razor-sharp insight into the medical and philosophical history of menopause (or the “climacteric”, as she prefers to call it), Greer is pretty hard to beat.
“Though the literature on menopause is vast, until recently very little of it had been written by women,” she noted at the time.
The Change was recently updated to include more contemporary references. Even the Kardashians get a mention, but Greer remains as clear-eyed as ever. “Before 2000 we heard hardly one word in [women’s] own voices, now online blogs and chat rooms resound to a chorus of female protest and complaint, most of it ill-informed and misguided,” she grumped.
As a guide for how to age disgracefully, Greer’s book remains useful. But it won’t be everyone’s cup of herbal tea. Thankfully, local publishers have also woken up to the trend of hapless women wanting to talk about their lives, and in particular their experiences of menopause.
I haven’t seen Menopause the Musical myself, so I can’t comment on its relevance. But I can personally attest to the fact that there is more to the menopause than hot flushes and middle-age spread, and it’s rarely a laughing matter.
Sadly, many younger women still seem clueless about the many women sail through this time of life without too many problems, some experience such massive changes that they quit their jobs and retire early.
This is a terrible waste of talent, and it’s heartening that this hidden problem has finally been exposed. But not everyone in the medical profession, or in workplaces, is yet on board, and New Zealand appears to be lagging behind both Britain and Australia on the issue.
Thankfully, there are two local books on the subject that should help to change things: Nicky Pellegrino’s Don’t Sweat It: How to make ‘the change’ a good one (Allen & Unwin), and Niki Bezzant’s This Changes Everything: The honest guide to menopause and perimenopause (Penguin).
Both authors are regular contributors to the New Zealand Listener and their informative pages should be required reading for any woman (or man living with a woman) who is about to approach, or in the midst of, this turbulent time of life.
After all, we might have come a long way, baby, but the great thing about being in your fifties in the third decade of the 21st century is you can be fairly sure there is still a reasonably long way to go.
