When did the menopause become the MOANOPAUSE?
As Emma Freud joins the list of stars griping about their symptoms, a despairing LINDSAY NICHOLSON laments...
There’s a sinister epidemic stalking some of our most beloved female celebrities. Broadcaster emma Freud, 58, reports being laid so low by it she asked her doctor to test her for dementia; Davina McCall, 52, recently confessed on Loose Women: ‘It really reminded me of when I was using [drugs] and I really hated it.’
Meanwhile, radio 2 DJ Jo Whiley, 55, sought medication to relieve the symptoms so she could co-present simon Mayo’s show. Carol Vorderman, 59, tells of suicidal thoughts. And Denise van Outen, 45, is taking no chances by using specially prescribed gels.
And this terror is by no means confined to the British Isles. The preternaturally sunny Gwyneth Paltrow, 48, has said it made her ‘furious for no reason’.
This hellish state of affairs — which inspired Noel Gallagher’s ex-wife Meg Mathews, 54, to set up a website dedicated to her struggle and co-author a book, The New hot, out this month — is a totally normal side-effect of female ageing, one which every woman will experience to a greater or lesser degree: namely the menopause.
We’ve come a long way since the last gasp of a woman’s fertility — which usually occurs between 49 and 54 — was something no celebrity would admit to under pain of being written off as a wrinkled old crone.
Now you can barely open a paper or click on a website without being regaled with a TV presenter’s traumatic transition to a life without periods.
It’s almost become a badge of honour. But I, for one, have had enough. I don’t want to hear them whingeing on about a normal aspect of biology.
You are probably expecting me to come over like a French And saunders character who blithely dismisses chopping off a finger as ‘just a scratch’. Not so. I had an horrific menopause, thank you for asking.
I had been diagnosed with breast cancer at 49 and, after three surgeries, embarked on a course of chemotherapy that had the side- effect of plunging me into early menopause.
In between throwing up and losing my hair, I suffered up to 20 hot flushes a day and night sweats so bad I would place a set of clean sheets and fresh nightwear beside the bed ready for a complete linen change in the small hours.
As my tumour was strongly hormone-related, hrT was out of the question even when my cancer treatment was over.
When I returned as editorial director of some of Britain’s most glamorous magazines, all I could do was put a fan on my desk and avoid roll-neck sweaters.
since I mostly worked alongside younger women or men, it was a bit lonely. There were no fellow sufferers to commiserate with when sweat plink-plinked on to the table during board meetings. But compared with the fear of my breast cancer returning, what about symptons be doing more were a few hot flushes? With each harm than good? one I envisaged more of the Celebrities cite depression or oestrogen that had become so anger as symptoms that need to lethal to me leaving my body. be relieved with hrT. But the
And there is certainly joy in lives of women in middle-age can being free of the 450 menstrual be full of reasons to be depressed cycles most women go through. or angry — are they suggesting Annoying as menopausal we just medicate it away and
As symptoms are — one website I return to the days of: ‘It’s your found lists 34, including a burning hormones, love!’? mouth and even electric shocks — are they really any worse than the mess, expense and inconvenience of spending ten FOr brain fog, years of your life bleeding? women almost always
Frankly, giving up roll-neck have far too much on sweaters seems a fair exchange their plates. Perhaps to wear white jeans. if the majority of care for elderly
What’s more, while I agree parents, support for teenagers menopausal symptoms can be and stresses of running the home extremely unpleasant, for those didn’t fall on female shoulders, who can’t use hrT — and hurrah there would be less depression or for those women who can — the brain fog among midlife women. worst symptoms should abate even more sinister is that age after four years, as did mine. discrimination, despite being
so, while part of me cheers that illegal, is still systemic, affecting the experiences of 51 per cent of women far more severely than the population can at long last men. A man in his 50s is ‘in his be discussed in mixed company, prime’, while a middle- aged I do wonder whether the current woman job-hunting may well find menopausal moaning is just herself on the scrapheap. ridiculously over the top. Women of my generation will
Might this competitive bragging remember having to remove an engagement ring before a job interview (because interviewers would assume you were soon going to get pregnant).
so it is a bitter pill to have to swallow that today’s employers might think women of a certain age are liable to have memory loss, rages or even demand time off, as Conservative MP rachel Maclean suggested in the house of Commons last year.
Because the reality is that menopausal symptoms, are all usually manageable with modern medicine, where necessary, and require no more time off work than the average male weekendwarrior for his sporting injuries.
Woman have worked long and hard to overcome the notion of being the ‘weaker sex’ and it feels perverse to go back to being regarded as victims of biology.
We are healthier, fitter and stronger than ever before.
so I wish these celebrities would stop jumping on the bandwagon and allowing a temporary physical state to define them.
What our grandmothers called ‘the change’ could, if they don’t shut up, very easily become ‘the trap’.