Far from "The Silent Passage," women are turning the biological change into a boisterous, humorous event. Sacramento Bee illustration/Charles Waltmire

Hot flash: Menopause is cool

Far from 'The Silent Passage,' women are turning the biological change into a boisterous, humorous event

By Alison apRoberts -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Tuesday, April 9, 2002

The corner of the coffee shop in the Borders bookstore is obviously the happening place to be on this rainy evening.

About 20 people chat and laugh as they sit in chairs in front of a podium set up for an author appearance at the bookstore on Douglas Boulevard in Roseville.

Preston Thomas, a 17-year-old senior at Granite Bay High School, walks over to check out the scene.

"What is this?" he asks, as he picks up one of the books stacked neatly by the podium where author Laura Jensen Walker is preparing to speak.

"This is a book about menopause," Walker says. Thomas sets down his copy of "Mental-Pause ... and Other Midlife Laughs" (Revell, $10.99).

"Oh, uh, cool," he says, as his ears turn red. Everyone laughs. He glances around at the crowd, which is mostly female and mostly of an age to be interested in the topic. He joins in the laughter, but he doesn't take a seat. After all, he is a few decades short and a gender shy of being able to relate. He nods and smiles and moves off to sit with some friends at a nearby table.

Thomas has just stumbled onto the latest hot news flash: Menopause is hip. It's humorous. It's entertainment. If you don't believe us, maybe you should catch the latest off-Broadway show in New York, "Menopause the Musical." We did not make this up.

The end of menstruation is not viewed as just a biological milestone of midlife anymore, nor is it the hush-hush source of anxiety that Gail Sheehy dubbed "The Silent Passage" in her classic book of 1991.

Menopause, which occurs on average at the age of 51, has become a boisterous affair. (For the medical purists out there, you should know that what everyone calls menopause is perimenopause. Menopause is a woman's last period; perimenopause is the several years of hormonal fun and games before and just after menopause.)

Leave it to the "Our Bodies, Our Selves" generation, those bodacious women of the baby boom, to turn up the volume on any phase of life. They are Midlife Woman, hear their numbers roar. In 1990, 5.8 million women in the United States were in the 50-54 menopausal age zone. By 2000, there were nearly 9 million women in that age range. Their numbers are expected to swell to a bit more than 11 million by 2011 before declining slightly by 2016.

The women gathered at Borders aren't aging quietly. They laugh in agreement as Walker talks about the necessity of carrying a small portable fan to combat hot flashes ("No menopausal woman should leave home without it") or the inevitable descent of body parts ("Everything goes south for the winter ... spring, summer and fall").

"Why should we suffer in silence? Let's suffer noisily together," says Sheri Jameson, with a laugh. She is 51 and Walker's sister-in-law, and has joined the crowd at Borders.

The period surrounding menopause is called a lot of things, from uncomfortable (mood swings, hot flashes and sleep disturbances are often part of the transition) to a relief (no more pesky periods, no more risk of pregnancy). The pioneering anthropologist Margaret Mead spoke of the promise and pleasure of life after, coining the term "postmenopausal zest." Thanks to hormone replacement therapy spokeswomen such as Patti LaBelle and Lauren Hutton, some might even call menopause glamorous.

But funny? Yes, insist more and more women, including Walker.

But then, Walker finds humor where others may not -- for instance, in cancer. Walker, who lives in the north area of Sacramento, was diagnosed with breast cancer in her mid-30s and wrote a humorous personal book about it, "Thanks for the Mammogram."

Chemotherapy threw her into early menopause in her early 40s. Now, at 45, she has written "Mental-Pause," recounting her own and others' stories of weight gain, memory fades and unwanted hairs.

Walker is no dispenser of serious medical advice ("I'm just a humorist," she insists), but she seems to have come up with the dose of levity that women want.

"I think people appreciate the book that meets them where they are," she says.

Walker's editor, Lonnie Hull DuPont, says she has been pleasantly surprised with how appreciative the market has been.

"It seems pretty niche, but it's selling really well," DuPont says. "It must have really hit a nerve."

DuPont, 49, says the book reflects a generational change: "It appears the boomers are much more open about this; my mother never, ever joked about it."

We've come such a long way, baby, we're ready to sing out loud about menopause.

A trio of women belt out "Change, change, change, change of life" to the tune of Aretha Franklin's "Chain of Fools" in the revue "Menopause the Musical," which just opened in New York.

Jeanie Linders, who is 53 and lives in New York and Florida, says a hot flash and a bottle of wine gave her the idea for the show, which features popular songs with rewritten lyrics. Audiences are drinking it up. It debuted last year in Florida to sell-out crowds and an extended run. A national tour is in the works.

It's not as daring or explicit as "The Vagina Monologues." It's also as far removed from a monologue as a show can get, as audiences hoot, holler and join in at every performance.

"Menopause crosses all lines; whether you're wearing plastic beads or pearls, when you're having a hot flash, it doesn't matter," Linders says.

Dee Adams also has found an audience hungry for a dose of what she calls "humor replacement therapy." Adams, 53, provides it online with her cartoon character, Minnie Pauz.

Minnie came to life online four years ago at www.minniepauz.com.

"I have always used humor to get through everything in my life," says Adams, who lives in Oxford, Mich., near Detroit. "Once you lighten up, you can get control of things."

More than a million hits every month are registered at the site, which offers information along with laughs and e-mail cards.

Other Internet sites -- and countless forwarded e-mail lists -- are full of menopause jokes, some biting and some just silly, like the one about a woman who is alarmed after finding coins in the toilet. Her doctor reassures her, "You're simply going through the change." Another standard joke provides the real cause of global warming: There are more than 470 million women 50 and over in the world having hot flashes.

There's already plenty that's serious out there -- including Web sites and books (there's a "Complete Idiot's Guide to Menopause," of course).

The yuck-it-up library is the newest wrinkle (and no creams will remove it). Titles include "Menopaws: The Silent Meow" (Ten Speed Press, $9.95), by Martha Sacks and illustrated by Jack E. Davis, which features a cartoon cat in perimenopause. Another notable entry is "Menopause Madness: An Empathetic Little Book," by Pat Ross (Fireside, $10). It features melodramatic movie stills with pithy, funny one-liners, such as, "It's a relief to be off the pedestal, but you miss the view."

Once upon a time, the medical view of menopause had no punch lines. It was dim and even dire.

"Fifty years ago, it was treated like a huge deal and nobody talked about it," says Carolyn Aldwin, who studies aging and health issues as a professor in the human and community development department at the University of California, Davis.

"The medical texts at that time associated menopause with insanity. In the '80s and '90s, researchers started finding out that lots of women are just fine," Aldwin says. "Most women don't get depressed and don't get really upset with menopause."

Medical researchers are taking menopause more seriously now than ever, in part because more women are living longer than ever after menopause. American women can expect to live a third of their lives after menopause.

UC Davis is participating in two major, multi-site national studies that touch on aspects of menopause: the Women's Health Initiative, a 13-year national study of more than 150,000 women ages 50 to 79; and the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation, a study of perimenopause.

Such research means lots more serious (and often conflicting) information about menopause is headed our way, particularly about the risks and benefits of hormone replacement therapy.

The women gathered at Borders to hear Walker seem to be keeping their cool through the hot flashes and the information overload.

"If we have to go through this, we're going to make it interesting," says Judi Braddy, who is 53 and lives in Elk Grove.

Jan Coleman, who is 54 and lives in Auburn, recommends a regular regimen of humor.

She says, "If you can laugh at it, you can live with it."

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Menopause facts

What is it? Menopause is the final menstrual period, marking the end of ovary function and fertility. It's official after 12 consecutive months without any periods, so it's a landmark you can note only after you've passed it. Surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments also may cause menopause.

When does it happen? The average age of women at menopause in the United States is 51.

The real trial: When people talk about menopause, they're usually speaking of perimenopause -- usually three years leading up to menopause and one year after the last period.

Signs: Perimenopause is a period of fluctuating hormone levels that may cause hot flashes, osteoporosis (bone thinning), insomnia, night sweats and mood swings. Symptoms vary widely, and generally subside within two years of menopause.

To HRT or not to HRT? There is much debate and research focused on the risks and benefits of hormone replacement therapies. They are effective at relieving hot flashes and night sweats and preventing osteoporosis, but long-term use appears to raise the risk of breast cancer. Their ability to prevent heart disease has not been determined.

Sources: The North American Menopause Society (www.menopause.org); WebMD (my.webmd.com); Institute for Research on Women's Health of the New England Research Institutes (www.neri.org).

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