Gwyneth is making menopause chic

THE fragrant high priestess of womanhood, Gwyneth Paltrow, tells us she is hitting menopause.

She’s suffering wild mood swings, that make her furious for no reason, and hot sweats, despite being perimenopausal, the bit before the really bad stuff happens.

As always with Gwynnie, help is at hand, if you can afford £70 (R1 293) a month for her herbal and vitamin treatment, curiously called Madame Ovary, available on her Goop lifestyle brand website.

Now, it’s easy to poke fun at her. She’s always flogging some right-ontrend miracle remedy for life’s travails. Some of them, as doctors have pointed out, are dubious.

But to me, Gwynnie is the Donald Trump of womankind: maddening, preposterous, in your face, but quite often right.

Despite her cringe-making announcement about her “conscious uncoupling” from first husband Chris Martin, for example, their separation turned out to be one of the most amicable divorces in show-business.

Likewise, Gwynnie’s comments on her change of life are par for the course, intensely irritating and with a touch of her usual gobbledegook.

“Menopause gets a really bad rap and needs rebranding,” she said, before stressing that what society needs today is great examples of “aspirational” menopausal women.

But again, isn’t there some truth to what she says? Mention the menopause 10 years ago, particularly in a career environment, and you’d have people reaching for the smelling salts. Yet 57% of UK women suffer from its symptoms according to the NHS and of those, 22% say they can’t cope without medication.

On the other hand, we have to keep things in perspective. For the majority of women it is not a torment, it’s just irritating.

I’m one of the 87% who did not suffer an emotional or physical breakdown as a result of it. We’re not all consumed by anger and hot flushes, but we should all feel compassion for those who are.

Above all, modern women want to get on with our lives, however it affects us. Which is why Gwynnie’s call for menopausal, “aspirational” role models is not quite as daft as it sounds.