A CHANGE IS GONNA COME
NEED A GOOD GUIDE TO YOUR FLABBY, FLUSHED 40S? SAM BAKER’S NEW BOOK IS HERE TO HELP, SAYS SuSan Griffin
IN SEASON two of Fleabag, Kristin Scott Thomas’s 58-year-old businesswoman, Belinda, assures a 33-yearold Fleabag that life does get better. ‘We have pain on a cycle for years and years and years and then, just when you feel you are making peace with it all, the menopause comes and it is the most wonderful thing in the world… you’re free,’ Belinda tells Phoebe WallerBridge’s dejected heroine over cocktails.
It was a seminal moment. The menopause is rarely handled with nuance on screen but, for once, there was no hint of the mocking, self-loathing tone typically deployed when depicting women ‘of a certain age’. Instead, it was refreshingly honest, and hopeful.
‘It was a real moment for me,’ says author Sam Baker. ‘Whenever you see women on TV around that age, they’ve all got a light padding, they’re getting hot or irate, or they’re the butt of the joke, but Kristin was hot in a good way.
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anybody say that without all the expectations of motherhood, you can concentrate on other things.’
It’s a message Sam amplifies in her book, The Shift, which examines the reality of menopause, in all its chaotic glory, and how society views women over 40.
Divided in two halves, the first part of the book is titled The S***, with chapters including The Last Egg, Good Morning, Flesh Duvet and
An End To F***ability, and the second part, The Shift, is devoted to the self-knowledge, freedom and power that follows.
‘I don’t see it as a menopause book… I see it like a memoir/ manifesto for re-reimagining the second half of our lives,’ says Sam, 54, who was editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan and Red before founding the financially disastrous but well-regarded online magazine The Pool with Lauren Laverne.
There is, however, plenty of detail about the seismic changes happening, physically and mentally, including the hot flushes, night sweats, moods, brain fog, low self-esteem and anxiety.
‘The menopause is like a reverse puberty but far from being young and going through a path that’s well-trodden and where you’re reasonably wellinformed, it’s a well-trodden path that nobody talks about,’ says Sam who lives in Edinburgh with her husband, the novelist, Jon Courtenay Grimwood.
‘For so long there’s been a slight sense of shame, you know, “Don’t tell anyone that this affects me, or they might write me off”. It’s ridiculous but I understand it,’ says Sam. ‘Several woman I spoke to for the book said they were telling me things about their bodies, innermost thoughts and relationships they didn’t even discuss with their friends.’
There’s still a long way to go, but a change is happening. Recently, Michelle Obama talked about her experiences of the menopause on her podcast.
‘The importance of Michelle Obama talking about it can’t be underestimated. The size of her platform means she gives the rest of us an in. If everybody just mentioned it, it would become normal,’ says Sam.
And now is the time to change the narrative.
‘What I want to say with The Shift is, this might be the end of the chapter, but it’s not the end of the book. And if nobody else has written this story, then we can write it for ourselves and that’s an incredible opportunity.’
On TV, for once, there was no hint of the mocking, self-loathing tone usually deployed
Manifesto:
Baker’s The Shift: How I (Lost And) Found Myself After 40 – And You Can Too (Coronet) is out now