I’ll talk to my doctor, not Joe, about menopause

AM I the only woman in Ireland who gave Liveline a miss for a lot of the week? It certainly feels that way. The rave reviews for Joe Duffy’s exhaustive coverage of what used to be coyly known as ‘The Change’ hailed the broadcaster as a ‘hero’ for this fine example of public service broadcasting. I can’t pretend that menopause is not relevant to me – believe me, you don’t want me to count the ways or indeed the years. Or maybe you do; and I just don’t get the ingredient that turns the subject of hot flushes, sanitary pads and brain fog into an interesting conversation.

The deluge of calls to Liveline on the matter is put down to menopause being a taboo subject for so long, swept under the carpet and cloaked in ignorance and shame. I suspect, however, that the real reason the Liveline was hopping was because of our human propensity to bore the paints off one another with stories of our aches and pains.

Fair enough there may be an issue about rapid advances in medical treatments for menopause – the alternatives to HRT and so forth – not being widely known, but there’s no more a taboo around menopause than there is about miscarriage, another painful process for which taboo status has also lately been falsely claimed.

Perhaps it’s because I only notice it now, at my time of life, but if you ask me, the menopause industry is in full swing. The subject gets wall-to-wall coverage, is hijacked by every washed-up celebrity in a bid to remain relevant and replaces childbirth as anodyne chat show fodder for the middle aged.

MEG Matthews has spoken about her experience of hot flushes as has Kim Cattrall, Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey – almost every powerful woman in America. Gwyneth Paltrow has called for a rebranding of menopause and an ‘aspirational menopausal woman’. It’s surely only a matter of time before Gwynnie flogs us an eye-poppingly expensive range of vaginal eggs for easing our ‘journey’ through it. Davina McCall’s documentary Sex, Myths And The Menopause went out this week on Channel 4.

Clearly there’s an audience for these anecdotal horror stories about the end of fertility but I have about as much interest in them as I have in men’s prostate problems. I prefer to talk to my GP about my madness and my moustache or perhaps my friends who might indulge me for all of three minutes.

It’s not that I think the menopause should be invisible – or that the suffering it causes some women should not be recognised by employers or GPs. Indeed a public information campaign might be an idea if it meant that no woman in the developed world ever again thought she was having a terrifying brain seizure when she suddenly starts overheating in bed.

But I’m also wary of anything that might act to reduce women to the sum of their bodily parts.

THE truth is that menopause effects women differently – for some it’s a nonevent, others can’t wait for the freedom from worries about birth control while others, by their admission, become certifiable basket cases. Yet in the workplace, menopause can potentially be weaponised against all women and, like pregnancy or childcare, used to keep them out of the best paid job. The trope of the menopausal old hag can also bolster the ageism that dogs women in public life.

Grief at ageing, the struggle to cope with the loss of looks and a shapely figure, being rendered invisible in a man’s world where female youth and prettiness are glorified – these are the more fascinating aspects of the menopause, the real toll. And, if you pardon the pun, they still don’t get much of a look in.