Meg Mathews: “The menopause ruined my sex life – it wiped me out!”
Reformed party girl and mum-of-one Meg Mathews opens up about her crippling anxiety, loss of sexual desire and learning to be comfortable in her own skin
She was an icon of the ’90s Britpop scene, famed for her rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. But a lot has changed for Meg Mathews over the past two decades: her 1997 marriage to Oasis rocker Noel Gallagher, with whom she has 19-yearold daughter Anaïs, fell apart after just four years, while her hard-partying ways have been traded in for a more relaxed pace of life.
And while Meg now prefers to keep her love life out of the spotlight, she hints at having someone special by her side. When Closer asks what she’s looking for in a man, she says, laughing, “You don’t know that I’m not seeing someone,” before adding cryptically, “I can’t really talk about that at the moment... when you meet someone, I think you can tell within minutes.”
OVERWHELMED
As she turns 53 this week, Meg’s focus is on her role as the new poster girl for the menopause, talking frankly about her own struggles – “it hit me like a tsunami” – and launching Megsmenopause, a range of products designed to help with symptoms due to hormonal changes.
“For me, it was bad. It wiped me out, physically and mentally,” Meg says of her own menopause, which began at the age of 48. “I just stayed in the house for three months and couldn’t face going out. The social anxiety and the mental issues I was facing were awful. I found life really overwhelming.”
It wasn’t until Meg started taking HRT at 49 that her symptoms alleviated.
“Before I took HRT, I was scared, but you can take it until you’re 99,” she says. “All this stuff was going on and I just needed my hormone levels balanced. I started to take HRT and got myself back.”
Meg admits the menopause affected her sex life and she split with her partner at the time, saying, “I lost all my libido. I was just like, ‘Urgh, don’t come near me’. I just wanted the whole bed to myself. The minute he wanted to have sex with me, I was like, ‘Get off’. It was the last thing that I was feeling.” She adds, frankly, “But you need to keep masturbating, because when you stop having sex, you don’t miss it. After four or five weeks, you’re much happier to just cuddle up with your dog.”
Her experiences prompted the entrepreneur to devise and launch her hero products for menopausal women, with carefully designed packaging so that Anaïs – who she lives with – wouldn’t bat an eye.
Meg explains, “I always have a house full of teenagers, so I wanted products like the lubricant to look like a face lotion, then nobody’s embarrassed about it.”
The seven-strong health and beauty range includes Blossom Balm skin moisturiser, and Meno Blend, a superfood supplement, as well as a vegan-friendly vitamin powder, which you mix into plant-based milk to combat fatigue.
HELL-RAISING PAST
Meg’s daughter, Anaïs, is a photographer and model with a strong Instagram following. In her online profile, she refers to herself as “not bad for an entitled child with no talent” – paraphrasing the negativity she’s received over her famous Gallagher surname. And Meg says, “She’s so proud of me and what I’m campaigning for. My daughter is very vocal and talks a lot about my menopause project.”
Despite being an established member of the party-loving Primrose Hill set – which included Kate Moss, Davinia Taylor and Sadie Frost – Meg initially feared her ’90s hell-raising exploits had come back to bite
her when she first started to experience crippling menopausal symptoms.
She explains, “I didn’t know what it was. I thought to myself, ‘Oh God, what have I done to my body?’ I thought my lifestyle had caught up with me after my rock ’n’ roll days.”
DATING WEBSITES
She admits to undergoing a non-invasive face lift in 2016 for a subtle “lift” to look more well-rested, and says, “I’ve had fillers before and got that ‘look’ and it’s ugly. Less is more now, it’s not all about having big lips, boobs and cheeks. The more natural you look, the better.” These days, she’s all for embracing her age. “I’m on dating websites and I do say, ‘Meg Mathews, menopausal’ in my bio. I’m proud to own it. No, I’m not going to be sh***ing your brains out every night, but if you’re looking for a companion that likes to walk dogs, then maybe! You just change in your life. I wasn’t like that in my twenties, thirties and forties, but I am now.” Megsmenopause is now available at Superdrug. Visit megsmenopause.com
‘I lost all my libido… I just wanted the bed to myself’