If you had asked 20-year-old me to explain what “perimenopause” was, I would have stared at you blankly. Honestly, I would have struggled to even tell you much about menopause. It was never a mainstream topic of conversation and studies have found most women were never educated about it.
Indeed, I’m pretty sure I learned far more at school about Henry VIII’s wives than what I could expect from my own body as I got older. Thankfully, things are changing. The stigma is being shaken away from menopause and it’s finally being taken seriously.
Celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Halle Berry , Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama have spoken up about their experiences and the need to have open conversations about this rite of passage. The actor Naomi Watts has a lifestyle brand devoted to menopause called Stripes Beauty, which was recently acquired by a luxury private equity firm. Other brands are popping up in the space as people realize that catering to menopause symptoms is a lucrative market.
Menopause is also being taken more seriously by the scientific community. In March, for example, first lady Jill Biden announced a new White House women’s health initiative looking into whether it is possible to delay menopause and the health issues that come with it. The announcement started with a droll but depressing story about misogyny in medical research.
“In the early 1970s, researchers in the US observed that women who had gone through menopause – therefore, who had lower.
