Loading...
Start Date
25-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
25-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
Menopause is a natural part of the life course, but for much of history it has been steeped in silence and shame. In the UK at least, recent years have seen a growing challenge to this erasure, however, evidenced in numerous ways from legislation activism, to expanded school curricula, to the proliferation of commercial remedies and ‘treatments’.
Nowhere is this shift more apparent than in media discourse, in which of late a stream of campaigns, feature articles and news coverage have begun to address the gap where a dearth of attention once lay. Furthermore, nowhere is this shift more apparent in media discourse than in the willingness of a significant number of high-profile women celebrities ready to share their stories and lend their names to menopausal disclosures of one kind or another. Interrogating how this ‘menopausal turn’, as I term it, has been enacted in the UK media and celebrity culture, this paper examines how notable women celebrities have lent themselves to becoming the ‘face of the menopause’. It examines some of the implications of this shift, from an expanded monetisation of the menopause, to an envisioning of menopause as primarily the terrain of white, cis-gendered, middle-class affluence - even aspiration - and how media scholars and audiences of all kinds must be alert to how the greater visibility of cultural attention to menopause is not to be conflated with greater inclusivity.
Changing the change?: The ‘menopausal turn’ and contemporary celebrity
Menopause is a natural part of the life course, but for much of history it has been steeped in silence and shame. In the UK at least, recent years have seen a growing challenge to this erasure, however, evidenced in numerous ways from legislation activism, to expanded school curricula, to the proliferation of commercial remedies and ‘treatments’.
Nowhere is this shift more apparent than in media discourse, in which of late a stream of campaigns, feature articles and news coverage have begun to address the gap where a dearth of attention once lay. Furthermore, nowhere is this shift more apparent in media discourse than in the willingness of a significant number of high-profile women celebrities ready to share their stories and lend their names to menopausal disclosures of one kind or another. Interrogating how this ‘menopausal turn’, as I term it, has been enacted in the UK media and celebrity culture, this paper examines how notable women celebrities have lent themselves to becoming the ‘face of the menopause’. It examines some of the implications of this shift, from an expanded monetisation of the menopause, to an envisioning of menopause as primarily the terrain of white, cis-gendered, middle-class affluence - even aspiration - and how media scholars and audiences of all kinds must be alert to how the greater visibility of cultural attention to menopause is not to be conflated with greater inclusivity.
Bio
Dr Deborah Jermyn is Reader in Film & Television at the University of Roehampton. She is the author and editor of 11 books and has published widely on ageing femininities and the media, including Female Celebrity and Ageing: Back in the Spotlight (2013) and, with Su Holmes, Women, Celebrity and Cultures of Ageing: Freeze Frame (2015).