Somewhere along the line, menopause stopped being a stage of life and became an identity. No one is quite sure of the exact moment this happened, but it was at some point between Davina McCall’s 2021 landmark documentary and Boots selling vibrators to menopausal women online.
Menopause is no longer simply a hormonal shift expected in middle age – now it comes with a tote bag and a snazzy T-shirt that says “cougar puberty”. As well as hormone replacement therapy (HRT), there are menopause podcasts, menopause books, and menopause retreats. You can go down Tesco and buy cooling pyjamas, thermal comforters, and enough magnesium to tranquilise a small horse. Menopause culture and menopause products are everywhere.
After thousands of years of enduring symptoms in silence, women are now finally reclaiming the conversation and shouting openly, “I am hormonal and it f**king sucks!” And quite right too.
But there is a danger in turning menopause and perimenopause into identities rather than understanding them as experiences. We may be accidentally reviving the very prejudices and stereotypes we thought we were dismantling – namely, that women are slaves to their hormones, psychologically fragile, and overly emotional.
This matters because for most of our shared history, women have been viewed as the “weaker” sex precisely because of their biology. It was the ancient Greeks who first came up with the idea that women were ruled by their wombs and their emotions, and we have been fighting the repercussions of that ever since. We were too emotional to have the vote, too delicate to work, and too unstable to lead.
If you think such outdated opinions have been consigned to the historical dustbin, think again. According to one 2019 study, one in eight Americans think women are too emotional to rule, a fact we saw play out in the failed election bids of both Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. Both women were widely attacked in the right-wing press as being “hysterical” or “unhinged” at various points in their campaigns. Research consistently shows us that women being unable to control their emotions is one of the oldest and most pernicious stereotypes in Western culture.
Yet here we are once again, willing to ascribe every wayward emotion, impulse, and irrationality in middle age to the almighty menopause. “Oh, I’m just menopausing” has become a common refrain amongst middle-aged women who may have forgotten what they walked into a room for. I’ve heard women apologise for being late and blame it on “peri-brain”. I have friends who have been rightly raging about an injustice at work but then check themselves by ascribing this emotion to a drop in oestrogen.
Aches, pains, and bad moods are now no longer simply because we are getting older and lead hectic lives – no, it’s because we are menopausal. All of which is reinforced by the proliferation of bullshit menopause products that have now swamped the market, telling us that our bodies and brains have gone insane and now require specialist care.
What we are seeing is the effacing of generic events that happen to all of us as we age, and the formation of an identity around the menopause that goes way beyond the symptoms initially being described. It is no longer something that is happening to you, but who you are – and the ongoing narrative around menopause tells us that person (read: woman) is emotional, unreliable, and liable to become periodically deranged.
You can see this identity being formed in the funny T-shirts, the stand-up routines, the plotlines on telly, and just how quick we now are to chalk up every emotion a middle-aged woman experiences to the horrors of the menopause.
Identities can be powerful things as they bring a sense of belonging and can give context to what we experience. For someone in the throes of menopause, knowing you are not alone can be transformational. But identities are also dangerous, as people tend to react badly when theirs are challenged and often start to filter all their experiences through the identity prism. The effects of the menopause then become a self-fulfilling prophecy: women are now expecting the mood swings, the forgetfulness, the irritability, and the stiffening joints, and so assume the mantle of menopausal instability as soon as the first hot flush hits.
There is a delicate balance to be struck here. The symptoms of fluctuating hormone levels that accompany perimenopause and menopause are not an identity, they are real. Anxiety, depression, insomnia, and hot flushes are potentially debilitating and require proper medical attention. Employers should take this seriously, doctors should listen, and real treatment should be accessible. But we can acknowledge the biological changes without surrendering the person.
I worry that in the rush to finally name what is happening when hormones start to shift, we are playing into the ancient misogynistic trope that women are at the mercy of their reproductive systems and ultimately are overly emotional, constitutionally weak, and not in control.
A woman can experience a profound change in her body without becoming a cautionary tale about female irrationality. She can be both angry and right, tired but ambitious, and teary but competent.
We don’t need specialist skincare, diets, clothing, supplements, workout routines, and vibrators during menopause and perimenopause. Diminishing oestrogen does not turn us in to weak, delicate little flowers who have lost the run of themselves. What we need is accessible treatment, more research, and support from those around us when required.
We can’t pretend that hormonal changes have no effect – they most certainly do. But a diagnosis can explain why someone has been struggling without redefining who they are.