Well, Now That Oprah’s Talking About It…

Perimenopause and Menopause Just Might Get Some Attention. Maybe.

That couch just might change the entire conversation for middle-aged women. (Photo: Eric McCandless)

Last night, at 10 p.m. EST, ABC ran an Oprah special: The Menopause Revolution. I tuned in in real time, knowing it got that time slot on a Monday because nothing else would be missed.

I could picture the programming executives saying, “It’s Oprah. We have to let her have air somewhere. Give her Monday at 10 and we’ll bump World News Tonight. Hit the advertisers hard.”

If they really thought menopause was a hot-ticket, they would’ve given her Sunday at 8, or Thursday at 9. But at least they gave her something.

Re-Spin with Halle

Halle Berry was the first guest, and bless her heart, she had laryngitis. I can imagine her frustration: “It’s OPRAH. On MENOPAUSE. I’m going out there if I have to pantomime!”

Halle’s been a huge advocate for women’s health, and in a lot of ways I don’t think it could be anyone else. She’s gorgeous. She’s a sex symbol. She’s black. She’s an Oscar winner. She’s diabetic and already super health conscious. She’s the perfect person for the job.

Her story of seeing her doctor after a night of sex is insane. She felt like she had, in her words, “razor blades in her vagina”, and the doctor told her she had herpes. Obviously, he was wrong. But it just goes to show you that even rich celebrities can have undereducated doctors.

What really struck me is how she admits she thought she’d skip menopause because of her healthy lifestyle. Until she said that, I didn’t realize I had thought the exact same thing! I thought, “Oh, that won’t happen to me!” Wrong! Check out Halle’s Re-Spin community.

Dr. Haver

Dr. Mary Claire Haver, an Ob/Gyn from Texas and menopause education pioneer, was on Oprah’s couch looking adorable in her bl-outfit and her red bottoms. I’ve been following her for the better part of two years and I’ve devoured her book, The New Menopause. She deserved to be up on that stage because she’s been working really hard to shine light on how little education doctors—even gynecologists—receive in medical school, and she’s working to change the tides.

Leann Morgan adds levity

Comedian Leann Morgan was in the audience, and her whole I’m Every Woman routine centers on the hilarious woes of midlife women. She’s another relatable character who adds humor and honesty and dimension to the midlife conversation, because sometimes you just have to laugh about the craziness.

MenoMadeModern

Oprah tossed to another woman named Kamili Wilson who, as life would have it, burst into a hot flash “in real time”. She started a blog and online menopause community (MenoMadeModern) for women of color. You could see the perspiration on her face as she talked about her early menopause and how women of color tend to begin symptoms earlier and suffer longer than women of different heritage.

Dare I Say It

Naomi Watts started losing her hormones just as she wanted to start her family. She told a funny story about sexy time with her boyfriend (now husband) where she ripped off her hormone patch because she was afraid he’d be permanently turned off. It wound up being a point of vulnerability and connection in their relationship. She has a book out called Dare I Say It and a midlife-focused company called Stripes for health and beauty supplies and supplements.

Emerging Medicine

Maria Shriver has been a women’s health champion for years and is a co-founder of the Cleveland Clinic’s Women’s Comprehensive Health and Research Center—an innovative and holistic care clinic for women. Many, MANY more of these centers need to start cropping up. What really impressed me about Maria’s segment is her eloquent outrage and list of issues that disproportionately affect women—Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, endometriosis, aging, and so on. Tackling these challenges has become her life’s work.

Your brain on menopause

Dr. Rhonda Voskuhl, a California neurologist, discussed the ways women’s confidence is eroded by cognitive changes that happen during hormone volatility. We’re not dumber. We’re not losing our intelligence. We just need hormones—and the sooner the better. It’s much more effective to catch things early than to try to fix the damage that’s done.

Here’s my takeaway:

I watched those women, and all the women in the audience, and I wanted to cry. I don’t know what that feeling was about other than pure frustration at the idea that generations of women have had to suffer with so many hard and sometimes horrible symptoms, being dismissed, being called hysterical or histrionic, being told it’s all in our heads, being tsk-tsked or eye-rolled, or having to deal with doctors who can’t even admit they don’t know enough to help.

Women have DIED because of their menopause symptoms.

A loss of estrogen changes our chemistry—every cell in our bodies is affected. So, women’s mental health is affected. And when you’re suffering without help, when you’re being told it just “is what it is”, and you’re feeling alone and depressed and hopeless and exhausted and invisible, well, bad thoughts can crop up.

One woman, Lynn, admitted she had been suicidal. Perimenopause broke up her marriage. She went to a dark, dark place. Finally she left her unhelpful male gynecologist and got the right help to find her way back. Oprah cheered her for hanging on.

All of this riled me up. I was angry.

I said to my husband, “It is UNBELIEVABLE that women have had to go through this without the right care. Without answers. It’s yet another instance of minimizing the pains of womanhood from puberty to death. It’s so unfair!” and, as he usually does, he took my rant about the systemic inequities as a personal attack.

He said, “Maybe women haven’t told doctors what they’re experiencing, or not enough women have told the same doctor.”

I was like, “Do you really think my Ob/Gyn, who is a WOMAN in her 50s, doesn’t have enough patients telling her about random rapid weight gain and hair loss and brain fog and depression and rage and all the other shit? Really? Of course she does! And yet she never warned me about what was coming!”

I know my anger is misplaced and he was just brushing his teeth in the wrong bathroom at the wrong time, but I’m pissed!

I’m mad that doctors haven’t been trained. I’m mad that women’s heath isn’t a priority.

And I do not buy for one second that it’s because women haven’t sought medical care.

The reason I think they haven’t been trained is because women over a certain age are societal throwaways.

Yes, I said it.

We have a youth-obsessed culture that doesn’t revere its elders. When women show any sign of aging—even laugh lines—there’s a rush to smooth it all out, pretend it’s not there, ignore that those lines and scars and blemishes have been earned through living. How many women look at their stretch marks and c-section scars and are like, Fk yeah, I did that! Zero. Or close to it.

Middle aged women have not been respected—not by medicine, and not even by ourselves. Our health challenges are inconvenient. We have other priorities, usually other people, jobs, pets, and homes we’re caring for. Our wellness is irrelevant once we’re past the age of pumping out babies or being a teenage dream, so it’s like, Meh, Off with the Crones! If you don’t think midlife invisibility is a thing, you’re not paying enough attention.

We are 50% of the population. I’d argue the smarter and wiser half. Yet we’ve been hidden away as we’ve “past our prime”. I don’t often toss to Hollywood as an exemplar of anything worth discussing seriously, but look at the hullabaloo Pam Anderson has drummed up simply by being “brave” enough to go out without a mask of makeup. Meanwhile, all these male actors have been showing up wrinkled and droopy for years without a single thought. In fact, without shame, they chase young, perky, collagen-rich women who could (and maybe should) stick to men their own age.

The double, triple, quadruple standard is alive and well.

But, actresses like Halle and Naomi and Drew Barrymore and Gwyneth Paltrow and others are not having it anymore. I’m so here for it! I always thought it was our music and feral nature that made Gen X the best generation, but maybe it’s that we are absolutely done accepting the shit sandwich handed to women. Ours will be the last generation to suffer in silence. We’re DOING something about it in public, out loud, without hesitation. We’re not scared. We’re not ashamed. We’re not throwaways just because our hormones have shifted.

This might just be what we need to get the eye of investors—because we all know money talks in research, in education, in solutions.

Thank you to the women with a microphone for using it for good. Every last one of us owes you our gratitude.

And thanks to ABC for airing it. How about you re-run it on a Sunday now? And maybe add an extra hour. This conversation is just getting started.

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