Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
The Change? Oh just give it a rest!
MEG Mathews gave an interview over the weekend where she revealed that her vagina recently fell apart.
The former Mrs Noel Gallagher, and face of 90s Cool Britannia, details this experience (technical term: vaginal atrophy), plus horrendous night sweats and overwhelming mental anguish in forthcoming book The New Hot.
It was all thanks to the menopause, you see.
As a woman with The Change still ahead of me, a plea. Could everyone stop constantly banging on about the menopause?
Meg’s tome is one of many on the subject, coming out now because Sunday was World Menopause Day, the jewel in the crown of World Menopause Month.
Ye s , t h e Worl d Health Organisation and International Menopause Society designated October as an entire month to raise awareness of no longer having a time of the month. It’s too much. In a bid not to be embarrassed or ashamed – which of course no one should be – we’ve now swung too far the other way, and are firmly in TMI territory.
All the accounts coming out are dramatic, terrifying, worst case scenarios – no-one’s getting a book deal off the back of buying some Veet and getting on with it – and these horror stories can only fill us with fear.
From what I understand, the
menopause isn’t optional. I can’t read all these disturbing cautionary tales and decide not to do it, so they’re only traumatising, leaving me with (hopefully!) (well) over a decade of dread.
Because as difficult as menopause is for some, for others it’s manageable. Even if you do end up having a bad one, anticipating it for ages in advance won’t make it any easier.
If anything, y ou’ve wasted the time you weren’t experiencing it worrying about what would happen when you did.
Numerous studies have confirmed the role of genetics in determining the age a women will go through menopause.
But the jury still seems to be out on whether the degree you’ll suffer symptoms is hereditary.
My mum reckons she breezed through menopause, hard ly noticing it... but when I was tearing my hair out with a teething baby, she insisted I never teethed.
The fact I patently have teeth suggests she may not be an entirely reliable source. But maybe that’s a blessing. Hearing your mum’s account of menopause can create a self-fulfilling prophecy says women’s health expert Doctor Christiane Northrup.
“One of my patients said to me, ‘My mother always told me the best years of her life started after menopause, and therefore I looked forward to it and never had a single problem’,” she says.
“Another said, ‘ My mother told me this is the worst thing that can happen pp to y you and I’m terrified’.”
Obviously it’s t’s important the facts about menopause are out there, so o women can recognise the wide-ranging symptoms rather ather than mistaking them m for something else, and nd understand what’s happening in their bodies. s.
We do need ed to talk about it. Just not relentlessly. entlessly. Going to the e loo is another natural biological ical function, but I don’t want to read endless accounts of that, never mind where it all goes as gruesomely wrong g as possible.
Let’s keep things on a need to know basis. Please. And speaking of need to know, anyone nyone worrying about Meg’s vagina a can relax. She had laser rejuvenation and her Wonderwalls walls are now restored ed to their former glory. lory.
Everyone stop constantly banging on about the menopause