Menopause Just Got a Whole Lot Better, But Also...Not.
There was a time not so long ago when the word menopause would not be mentioned at all, definitely not at work. Today, everyone is talking about it. Recent research and reviews of past research have debunked some old fears about treating menopause and have opened up a lot more options for women to manage symptoms and restore a higher quality of life. All of that is good news. Great news really. Women “of a certain age” are no longer being completely ignored, and more women are seeking and demanding appropriate care for the many and varied symptoms and experiences of menopause.
We no longer have to suffer in silence and pretend that we are “fine” when we are very much not, or ask for care that doesn’t exist. We no longer worry about making people uncomfortable with the very mention of the word menopause. All of this can be extremely empowering, and a lot of the current messaging about menopause is indeed about empowerment.
But alongside this good news, there is something of a dark side too, and that is that menopausal women are (finally) being recognized as a powerful group to market products and services to. And now products and services for menopause are everywhere.
Messages that make you feel like you need to fix or change yourself in order to be healthy or acceptable are a red flag.
I remember my grandmother in her 60s being soft, round. She looked to me like she was 60, and I loved it. It was comfort. It made sense. Now in our 50s and 60s, we’re being told that we need to look like we’re 35 and if we don’t, it’s because we’re doing something wrong.
We’re exercising, but we’re doing the wrong kind of exercise now, we’re eating healthy, but it’s never enough protein. We now need a whole host of programs and products to ensure that we don’t gain any weight, especially the dreaded menopause belly fat, we don’t get wrinkles, we have shiny hair and perfect skin and no cellulite and basically that we remain in the tiny perfectionist box that younger women have always been told they need to occupy at a great personal expense of time, money, energy and mental load.
Now they’re coming for us. We don’t get to soften. We don’t get to age. We are expected to spend all the resources we may have on injections, weight loss programs, new fitness regimes, supplements and unbelievably expensive skin care products.
In generations past, they left us alone and although being ignored had a huge cost, so does being told that your body is a project that you must always be working on and trying to perfect.
So, what do we do?
If you’re in what they now call “your menopause journey” you may have been the target of the new intense marketing and feeling like you’re somehow getting menopause wrong, even though you’re doing a whole lot of things. Been there. My social media feed is jam-packed with helpful menopause messages, all of which are selling me a quick fix or a solution to the human aging process. Listen, I’m not saying I don’t value my health or that I’m above caring about how I look. That’s not true. I pay attention to what I eat, I exercise, I want to look my best. But there’s also a place where all of this becomes a major distraction. An obsession.
Spending all that time and money feeds the idea that women must approach our bodies as a project to be worked on, all our lives. Our bodies are not okay or acceptable unless they meet certain (mostly impossible) standards, and we should spend our lives working towards those standards at great personal and financial cost. And if we do not? Well, we lack discipline. We have appetites that are out of control. We’re lazy. We’ve let ourselves go. This keeps women very distracted, very busy and very poor. It keeps us from spending our time and energy on other things we value. Be wary of anyone selling you the answer.
The reality is menopause is a huge time of transition. We are changing. And it’s up to each one of us to figure out what we want to change into. As tempting as it is to follow the external expert or buy the program that promises to solve all our problems and eliminate the discomfort that always comes with change, trying to stay the same is a missed opportunity, besides which it’s probably futile.
Times of change are inherently uncertain and uncomfortable. I feel like I’m going through a transition on a similar scale to puberty, and I don’t know about you, but I recall puberty kind of sucked. You don’t recognize your body, it’s hard to trust it and, along with physiological changes, always comes changes to our sense of self and our identity.
Empowerment has always been an inside job. And menopause is a time with the distinct potential for more power and freedom from the myriad social constraints on women’s bodies. But it’s up to us to define this transition, claim it and decide who we want to be on the other side.
