It's time to reclaim the menopause, says MARIELLA FROSTRUP: Forget the shame and tedious symptoms, you could be entering the best years of your life (and even A-lister Naomi Watts agrees)
Share:
When Naomi Watts proclaims that menopause is a badge of honor, it's a sign that the tides have finally turned in favour of the older woman. For three thousand years menopause has been shameful. But now, in 2025, are you even a celebrity if you aren't proudly and joyfully proclaiming your lack of hormones?.
![[Naomi Watts, pictured at this year's Golden Globes, was warned not to reveal she'd gone into early menopause because it would draw attention to her age]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/22/11/94385095-14312719-image-a-15_1737546140335.jpg)
I've had my finger on the weak pulse of the subject of women's midlife health for the last decade, and during that time it's gone from tedious and toxic to the top of everyone's hotlist. This week, our US book, Menopause Is Hot, which I wrote with journalist Alice Smellie, is released in the US, with a foreword by the incredible Naomi.
The topic of diminishing hormones has finally gone global and there's a host of reasons why menopause might just be the best thing that happens to you. What's more, this is a gang that everybody wants to join. As I say, it’s absolutely not always been this way. Since the time of the Greek philosophers, women's bleeding - and its stopping - has been regarded as, variously: unclean, poisonous, insanity-creating and generally repulsive.
The forced shame of being an older woman, along with the raft of horrendous cures thrown our way, from leeches to ice water injections to chloroform, means that it's hardly surprising we barely spoke about the subject. In 2015 I first wrote about menopause and then in 2018 I made a very well-received BBC programme about it. I assumed that I'd done enough and left that particular subject alone (there's still plenty to campaign about when it comes to women's rights!).
