In Praise of Post-Menopausal Zest
Many women see the end of their fertile years as liberating, like a ‘second youth’ — so why are we sold a different narrative?
Almost everything I learned about sex came from books on my parents’ bedroom bookshelf, among them the 1969 best-seller “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask).”
I’m pretty sure I flipped past the section on menopause — I was in the midst of puberty so I didn’t even have a concept of what menopause was. But while doing research for my book on changing the narratives about older women, I stumbled upon a passage in the book, later made into a Woody Allen movie, that floored me:
“To many women, the menopause marks the end of their useful life. They see it as the onset of old age, the beginning of the end. Having outlived their ovaries, they think they may have outlived their usefulness as human beings. They may fear that the remaining years will just be marking time until they follow their glands into oblivion.”
The end of our “useful life”? Outlived our “usefulness as human beings”? What use would that be? Popping out babies? Is that all women are good for?
No surprise it was written by a man — Dr. David Reuben. (For the record, Reuben, who had…
