Can you really get through menopause on a budget when up against the meno-industry, asks Kate Dyson
I’ve been writing about women’s healthcare now for around eighteen months, mostly articles for clients websites and blogs and emails and newsletters. I’ve been ‘immersed’ in the menopause conversation, so to speak – the conversation that was kick started by Davina McCall’s documentary Sex, Myths and the Menopause in 2021.
It was a lightening bolt moment for many women. It felt like the Pandora’s box of women’s health was opened – in public! – on one of the most taboo topics of all; menopause. Not taboo between you and I; after all, women have spoken for thousands of years about the ‘change’ and how it makes them feel between their peers.
No, it’s a societal taboo, a taboo created by the media, the fashion industry, by TV and movies and magazines and newspapers. Created by men. By men who are sexually obsessed by young, fertile women who will accept their bullshit and their seed, who will procreate and carry and ‘heir’, who will help them build their Roman Empire. Not the infertile but wiser, seen-it-all-before, bullshit busting (and ball busting) midlife woman who has no fucks left to give and far more chutzpah than to spend all her waking moments thinking about a fallen, problematic ‘empire’.
No, we know only too well the barren grey haired spinster, the witchy, terrifyingly hook nosed ‘old’ woman who petrifies the young and beautiful, sucking their youth dry with her dry, thin little mouth and a cackle that lights up the moon as she dances with the heart of some poor fucker she came across while he was doing manly things, like… lazing around in the woods, or skipping chores by ‘hunting’, or building useless rock circles and the like. She of warty nose and baggy tits, plump in all the wrong places and grey pubes. We know the hysteria that women’s bits can cause – our sex’s history is full of women incarcerated as a result of mental illness caused by wandering wombs (yes, really) and wrongful orgasms only too well.
Davina’s documentary didn’t just bust some myths, it smashed the back door in on menopause once and for all. By the time she got to the revelation about HRT and breast cancer women across the land were punching the air and shouting THANK FUCK FOR DAVINA, OUR MENO-HERO!
So all in all, it’s great we are in a more positive place about the ‘change’, even if it’s just that we can actually utter the words ‘perimenopause’ or ‘menopause’ over a coffee and chinwag about vaginal dryness with a friend, without whispering behind our hand like it’s some dirty little secret. Okay, maybe we’re not quite at the point of vaginal dryness but you get my drift.
The problem with the current menopause revolution is that it feels more unequal than ever, because the menopause revolution that we are witnessing is one fuelled by private prescriptions, paid-for apps, supplementation that costs £100 a month, and personal trainers.
Where is the affordable, low cost, NHS-based, menopause for the rest of us?
What do we do when the money has run out (if it ever even existed) and we can’t afford the supplements and the nutrition and the private script HRT and the ticketed midlife events at the Business Design Centre? What happens when you can’t afford a Vampire’s Wife dress to be part of the menopause in-crowd and are left in your Saino’s TU best, shuffling on the sidelines hoping for the crumbs of information of the wealthy few in the desperate hope of your own ‘best menopause LYFE’ too? What then?
Let’s face it, menopause is fast becoming a ‘natural phase’ for women that can afford it. Sure, there are websites like Balance with some free info on and you can download some resources that are never as good as the things you can buy. Sure, you can google search terms like ‘best supplements for menopause’ and read through 93,900,000 results to find the information you need. Sure, you can go and book and appointment with your GP and tell them you are feeling a bit peri and listen as they tell you that actually you can’t possibly be menopausal because didn’t you know menopause is for old women and you are too young at 43?
And you can watch the news about the HRT crisis and silently suspect that that might have a big part why your “blood work is fine” as you take the antidepressant that you were prescribed in lieu of hormone therapy, and watch the world around become uncomfortably numb.
Menopause is a natural, inevitable phase of our lives. It’s unavoidable – even less avoidable than periods. You can stop a period, but you can’t stop menopause – you can merely manage the symptoms of it and make it a little easier. It’s going to happen to all of us – well the female 50% – at some point.
So you’d think that maybe, just maybe, we could have a slightly more democratic-kind-of-menopause, wouldn’t you? Where ‘midlife influencers’ aren’t held up as some kind of meno-messiah while they flog you lavender bags and fitness videos and where supplements that ease some of the fog and the flushes are a little more affordable? Dare I even say – where men and male investors aren’t spying an opportunity in our pain and lack of information and spinning a dollar or five on our vulnerability?
There, I said it.
Menopause is becoming big business, because women do NOT have the information they need to navigate their own hormones, understand fluctuations, have advice at their fingertips and know the resources that they can trust. Women have such a very basic lack of understanding of their own biology – nearly 50% in a survey didn’t know how many ‘holes’ they have – that it’s clear that there is big business to be made out of ignorance and lack of knowledge. And the money is far too often swimming back to men, which is a great reason – if ever I needed one – to learn more about my own hormonal state and body, that’s for sure.