Her name is Minnie Pauz, and she’s the baby-boomer’s Cathy, a
                           plump, plucky, work-at-home grandma who’s outgrown her younger
                           counterpart’s obsessions with geeky boyfriends and chocolate binges.
                           And you won't find her anywhere but online.

                 Minnie is all about middle-age, about making her way through
                 menopause, one cartoon panel at a time. And if that means she crawls
                 under the spray mist of her local produce section to cool off, well, you do what you
                 have to do.

                 And then you get on with it. What choice do you have?

                 Every Woman’s Minnie

                 Minnie is the brainchild of 53-year-old Dee Adams, a Michigan woman who had never
                 drawn a cartoon until five years ago. Divorced, a single mom and grandmother, living
                 by her wits and computer skills, Adams was struggling with the early symptoms of
                 menopause.

                 “I was a mad woman, I was depressed, I didn’t know what was going on,” she says.
                 “And suddenly the name of this character just came to me: Minnie Pauz. And I thought,
                 ‘that has to be a cartoon character somewhere.’”

                 It wasn’t. So Adams sat down at her coffee table and sketched out seven cartoons. “I
                 looked at them, laughed, and said ‘Oh, forget it, this is never going to work,’” she
                 says. She put them in a drawer and went back to Web design.

                 But over the next six months, with encouragement from her friends and family, Minnie
                 emerged — fat, faceless, and as spunky as grandmas get.

                 “Minnie’s the only cartoon character out there for the baby boomers,” Adams says.
                 “We all used to read Cathy, but Cathy never got any older. And guess what? We did.”

                 ‘The Change’ Becomes ‘The Norm’

                 And we still are.

                 The average life expectancy for women in the United States jumped from 51 years in
                 1900 to 79 years in 1990, according to the National Cancer Institute. That means a
                 50-year-old woman can expect to live one-third of her life after menopause.

                 In addition, the surge of baby-boomers bearing down on middle-age means “they”
                 are rapidly becoming “us.” We are the world of menopausal women: an estimated 40
                 million of us are expected to go through the experience during the next 20 years.

                 Let me say that again: Forty million of us — the equivalent of the entire population of
                 the state of California — are headed like rockets into the era of sleepless nights, hot
                 flashes, inexplicable mood swings, and the kind of skin crawlies you thought
                 happened only in horror flicks.

                 That should be a regular laugh riot, don’t you think? And not just for us, but for our
                 mates, our children, our doctors, our co-workers — and anybody else who crosses
                 our paths when we’re having a bad day. Or year.

                 Minnie’s World View

                 Menopause can be emotionally draining and physically debilitating — the stuff of
                 which crisis, not necessarily comedy, is made — but it isn’t a disease, argues
                 Adams. And if laughter isn’t the best medicine, it beats the heck out of crying.

                 Minnie does plenty of both. But readers never see her face while she’s doing it; the
                 character is always viewed from behind (and a considerable behind it is.)

                 That’s because Minnie is “Every Woman,” says Adams, and her anonymity makes her
                 more accessible to readers. Not incidentally, it also makes her easier to draw.

                 “OK, well, I couldn’t do faces when I started to draw Minnie,” Adams admits, “so I
                 started drawing her from behind. But I’ve asked thousands of the women who come
                 to my site whether Minnie should have a face, and they always say no. They like her
                 just the way she is.”

                 Unlike most other cartoonists around the world, Adams is not interested in sending
                 Minnie into syndication. Instead she's using the Internet as her publishing platform,
                 reaching out to her readers one click at a time.

                 Adams, who calls herself “The Martha Stewart of Menopause,” is building a “Minnie
                 empire.” She makes guest appearances at pharmaceutical and medical trade
                 shows, where doctors are eager to help their female patients find some humor in
                 their experiences. Her weekly newsletter goes out to more than 3,500 subscribers,
                 thousands of site visitors have sent Minnie greeting cards, and the site itself has
                 been a top pick of most major Web portals.

                 Minnie’s such a hit because she speaks to women’s lives, says Adams. “We’re
                 getting older, and that opens up a whole new world,” she says. “There’s no end to the
                 stories Minnie has to tell.”

                 I particularly like the one where she’s telling the exercise instructor what he can do
                 with his words of encouragement. Minnie may be every woman, after all.

                A teacher and a journalist, Dianne Lynch is the author of Virtual Ethics. Wired Women
                 appears on alternate Wednesdays.