October 18 marks World Menopause Day, and a growing number of high-profile women are using their platforms to talk openly about their own experiences: the changes it has brought to their daily lives and the stigma that still surrounds it.
Naomi Watts
Naomi Watts has spoken repeatedly about the stigma and stereotypes attached to early menopause, hoping to shift attitudes both in Hollywood and in society at large. The 58-year-old actress has said she was told her career would be over by 40, so she worked nonstop. When she was finally close to starting a family, she learned she was approaching menopause.
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Watts recalled that the news filled her with panic, fear, and shame, though she has chosen to spare the details. She did go on to have children, but severe symptoms set in soon after her second child was born, when she was in her early forties. Even then, she said, she felt deeply ashamed and believed that simply uttering the word would brand her as finished: ready to be put out to pasture, no longer sexy, no longer able to perform. Raising the subject, she thought at the time, would amount to career suicide.
Eventually, however, she concluded that the silence made no sense. Women make up half the population, she reasoned, and every one of them will go through menopause at some point, so why shouldn’t they talk about it?
Michelle Obama
Former first lady Michelle Obama has also discussed her experience publicly. On her podcast, she described the hormonal changes that accompany menopause, revealing that she had experienced night sweats even earlier, in her thirties, as a result of fertility problems.
Gwyneth Paltrow
Through Goop, her wellness company, the Oscar-winning actress has written candidly about the transition. Paltrow said that entering perimenopause brings a host of noticeable changes and that she could feel the hormonal shifts, the sweating, and the mood swings. Menopause, she argued, is in urgent need of a rebrand.
Oprah Winfrey
The veteran broadcaster has written in her magazine about her own experience and about the widespread lack of understanding surrounding the subject. Winfrey said that this lack of awareness led her to ignore her symptoms for years before she finally grasped what was happening to her body. She also revealed that she suffered heart palpitations between the ages of 48 and 50.
Courteney Cox
Courteney Cox addressed menopause head-on in a now-iconic video that went viral on social media, refusing to sugarcoat any aspect of it. Back in 1985, Cox, then appearing in a tampon commercial, became the first person to say the word “period” on American television, breaking a taboo around a natural process that no one had dared mention on air. Decades later, she set out to show the raw reality of menopause. In the video, she asked viewers whether menopause had completely changed their lives and whether they were still having hot flashes. She said it could change how women feel about aging, that it eats you alive like nothing else can, and that it comes with the added “bonus” of dry skin and hair loss. There is nothing good about menopause, she concluded.
Kim Cattrall
Kim Cattrall summed it up in a few simple but powerful words. She said she feels empowered talking about menopause, having been going through it for six years, a sign that she has come to terms with this new chapter of her life as a woman.