My friend sent me my first perimenopause meme about a year ago, when we were 41.
I double-tapped it out of courtesy, not really knowing what it had to
do with me. But after she sent three or four more, I finally asked her
what she was talking about.
‘Are we in perimenopause??’ I wrote. The last time I checked, I was a
sprite young teenage woman, barely into the fifth decade of her life,
easily passable for 37 and able to touch her toes.
‘We are!’ she replied. ‘It starts at 35-38.’ Slightly panicked, I typed back: ‘Who said?’
Her response: ‘Everybody.’
As someone being regularly tracked and monitored by Google Ad
Services, of course I’d heard of perimenopause. My algorithm basically
got down on all fours and started panting like a dog the second I
turned 40. Overnight, I was inundated with nonstop ads for pills and
potions all promising to reinvigorate my newly decaying corporeal
form.
But lately, maybe because I’ve clicked on one or two of those ads or
because those memes have multiplied like maggots, I can’t get away
from it: Big Perimenopause is here and it’s dragging me with it.
How it started
According to Google, the perimenopause conversation exploded somewhere around late 2022, the same time several high-profile female
celebrities were talking about (or investing in) its supercharged big
sister, menopause.
- Naomi Watts launched her menopause-focused skincare line Stripes
- Gwyneth Paltrow, Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore all invested in
Evernow, a telehealth start-up focused on relieving menopausal symptoms - Michelle Obama opened up to People about needing moral support while she went through menopause
- Courtney Cox posted a funny updated version of her 1985 Tampax
commercial, this time about menopause “eating you alive”
Suddenly menopause was trending (and trendy), so it was the perfect
time for perimenopause to tag along.
Perimenopause is the time leading up to menopause that often begins in
your mid- to late-40s (though for some women it can begin in their
mid-30s). Symptoms include irregular periods, hot flashes, night
sweats, sleep disturbances, and mood changes, as well as other
physical changes.
It’s not a single event – it’s a continuous process, one that doctors
say can last several years. And even if a woman has experienced some
or all of these symptoms, there’s no one test or sign that will
determine that she’s officially entered perimenopause.
So… clear as mud – it’s a thing, for sure, but no one can tell you if you have it, you just sort of have to guess.
Peri mania
Which could explain why half of the strangers in my algorithm have
been so quick to grab the diagnosis and slap it on all of their
problems – to the point where it’s starting to feel like an identity.
Weight gain? Perimenopause. Can’t sleep? Perimenopause. Forgot your
keys? Perimenopause. Suddenly bad at eyeliner? Perimenopause.
Obviously women’s health is important and chronically understudied.
Before 1993, we were rarely included in clinical trials. Women’s
health research is woefully underfunded, and physically, the world has
been designed for and by men. Ask any woman under 5’5” who’s ever put
on a seatbelt—those car companies want us dead.
But I do think it’s important to ask: what if your symptoms aren’t
perimenopause? Or at the very least, what if they’re not only perimenopause?
The body changes for all of us after 40—we gain weight, our skin sags,
our vision changes, our joints get stiffer. Not to mention lifetime
happiness reaches its low point in your 40s. The sting of nostalgia
creeps in and your life starts to look like all the decisions you made
along the way.
Your forties also place you in the “sandwich generation,” where you might
be simultaneously taking care of young and/or adult children as well
as aging and/or ailing parents.
It’s a midlife mess and sometimes it really sucks. (Or as Carl Jung put it, “The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid.”)
Taking stock
As for me, it feels like a longer-than-usual rest stop where I’m reflecting on the first 40 years of my life, looking out over the next 40, simultaneously sad, happy, joyous and grieving, and wondering who the f*** stole the compass.
Sometimes I lie awake wondering what I really want, if this is it, if I should be more grateful for what I have or more active in bracing for the sadness yet to come.
So yeah—sometimes I toss and turn.
But I am not only what is happening to my body. And as a semi-reformed
former hypochondriac, I have no interest in labelling every physical
sensation sparking inside of me. I know Father Time will have his way
with me when it’s my turn, but I’m not inviting him over before our
appointment, are you crazy?
Maybe, like American talk show host Candace Cameron said about scary movies, the memes are a portal. So I rebuke them – get them away from me!
Maybe my refusal to laugh along with them is just delusion. Perhaps I’m in denial about my age and terrified about the closing of a chapter. It could be I’m just too scared to look it in the face.
But can’t that be fine, too? Men famously go kicking and screaming
into midlife. They cheat on their wives, buy Ferraris, get into MMA,
and fly to Turkey for hair plugs. They buy presidential elections and
become obsessed with space. And for the most part, we let them.
Perhaps I’m just asking for women to give themselves a little more room,
to steal some from the men, and to not get attached onto any more labels we just spent a decade unlearning. Especially one with such bad PR.
And I guess while we’re at it, I’m at least asking for better memes. After all, we’re millennials, we invented memes. We gotta do better than this.
You can read more from Nicole James here.
