Menopause and the ‘menoboom’1: how older women are desexualised by culture

Abstract

The cultural and subjective gazes continue to characterise the process of female ageing as one of loss, in which the female body is both desexualised and degendered. This chapter explores the relationship between these two deeply problematic concepts, drawing on a public menopause discourse from the lifestyle media and the growing sub-genre of semi-autobiographical mid-life narratives. It compares these public voices with the private voices of a group of women’s individual accounts of the menopause, taken from a series of qualitative interviews. The draws on age theorist Margaret Gullette’s contention that the menopause is culturally constructed, that the profusion of menopause discourses (‘the menoboom’ 1997: 98) artificially conflates menopause with inevitable decline, creating a single narrative of loss: of physical strength, of emotional stability, and of sexual attractiveness. The chapter concludes that the notion of an older female body which can still be sexual remains too challenging for the narrow ideological, visual and linguistic repertoire of a prevailing culture.