Monika Weychert 
MENPAUSE AS TRANSITION

Abstract ↓

Drawing by Marta Ignerska

The very ‘witty’ pitch of a famous showman and equally famous comedian: ‘You once said you can’t hang out with your female peers. What could you talk about with them? Urinary incontinence?’1 Horselaugh. Complacency. In addition, from Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Cranford, we learn that a fifty‑two‑year‑old woman has a shaking head, trembling hands, deep wrinkles have ploughed her face, she is rheumatic and poor‑sighted.2 For years, women would suffer the effects of menopause. However, contrary to appearances, they did not suffer from the effects conditioned by changes in the body, but from the social perception of those effects. For centuries, ageing women were subjected to violence such as incarceration in mental institutions, absurd medical procedures, e.g., uterus excision, or lastly – killed. As Mona Chollet claims in Witches, it was mainly menopausal women who died at stakes, on gallows, on scaffolds, in dungeons and deep wells.3 Female ageing is a social construct shaped by biologisation, somatisation of the change taking place in the body in the socio‑cultural and identity‑related context. In which, as opposed to the same period in men’s lives, there is also a category of ‘visual age’ assigned to them.4 Therefore, women were also easily lured by promises of eternal youth and reversion of the ageing process: bathing in goat milk or blood; sleeping on ice; hormonal therapies; plastic surgery; diets; gyms; and fitness clubs. That was precisely how Kristy Pucho wrote about the heroines of the film Death Becomes Her. The protagonists of Robert Zemeckis’ picture are actress Madeline Ashton and her former friend writer Helen Sharp. Helen eats down her frustrations and gets fat at an alarming rate, while frustrated Madeleine wonders how to reanimate her increasingly withering beauty and moribund career. And then comes the mysterious Lisle von Roman offering an equally mysterious beautifying mixture. Both women, of course, are eager to use it – regardless of the consequences. ‘They fight for beauty,’ [Tom] Campbell said.5 They’re against the system. […] We root for the undead divas because they’re trying to win a game that’s rigged against them, and – to borrow an apocryphal quote from Ginger Rogers – they sort of have to do it ‘backwards and in high heels’.6 I think it’s really feminist that they’re willing to take their lives into their own hands.’7 The descriptions quoted in the first sentences of this text relate directly to me, they are about my peers. However, they arouse my deep dissent and a desire to go through this period on my own terms. In the article, I focus on the social contexts of this attempt to seize power over one’s political presence in the world.

Today, contempt and disregard have become the main weapon against women in the perimenopausal period. Many labels have been coined for those who are slowly and inevitably ageing. I will begin with the seemingly positive ones: there are men – silver foxes – and women – cougars. A Silver Fox is simply a mature attractive man, aged 50–70. A Cougar Woman is much younger: only around 30 or 40, and she is a woman who hunts and pounces on much younger men. Currently, this term also means an attractive woman who has a successful sex life, career path, and is financially independent. Two important pieces of information have been sewn into these terms. Firstly, the twenty‑year shift in women’s attractiveness in relation to men’s. It is very rare for a woman in her 60s or 70s to be described as a sexy person in a fairly neutral way. Ever since antiquity, a woman of a ‘certain age’ could not like herself. Zeuxis was to die staggering with laughter while painting an old woman who had commissioned him to portray her as Aphrodite, the most beautiful of the goddesses. Seeing her desire to forget the passing of time, clothes inadequate for her age, and an overwhelming urge to please at all costs, the painter began to laugh so much that he gave up his ghost. The story inspired Rembrandt and his apprentice de Gelder, among others. Secondly, the silver foxes’ erotic life is self‑evident, while older women actively looking for partners are hypersexualised and considered a phenomenon verging on perversion. The commentariat currently writes about one of the celebrities: ‘She’s forgetting her age, and her clothing choices are distasteful, you can really look feminine and elegant in slightly longer skirts at her age’; ‘a crone pretending to be a 20‑year‑old, embarrassing, looks like it’s a big mental disorder’; ‘An old lady has already a screw loose. She’s very much in love with herself’; ‘Midlife crisis. Zero class. She has a face like a sad spaniel herself. You can’t cheat time. Gravity’; ‘Old woman’s feet’, ‘The bint’s tripping and trying to bewitch reality.’8 The woman is just over 40. Eimear McBride comments on this, describing a similar scandal concerning Helena Christensen:

She9 seemed to be making it clear to middle‑aged women everywhere that exhibiting their peri‑menopausal selves in anything less that an anti‑bingo‑wing burka would not be without consequence […]. After all, my God, were women to suddenly reject the idea that middle age, and the body that accompanies it, is synonymous with arriving at an irreversible state of shame, what societal madness would not ensue?10

Haters address one of the politicians directly: ‘Go home, old bag, and wait for the Reaper.’ Has such an appeal ever been made to this woman’s male peers and politicians older than her? The neoliberal need to be productive has significantly broadened the category of ‘redundant people’. Excluded from social life. As Achille Mbembe writes: ‘[…] this scission of humanity into ‘useful’ and ‘useless’ – ‘excess’ and ‘superfluidity’ – has remained the rule […]’.11 From the Middle Ages to the 18th century, it was the ‘loosely people’ class, characterised by liminality – its representatives were outside the classes – and the fear it evoked, undermining the established social order and public security.12 A similar threat in the eyes of the authorities was then to be brought by any ‘dangerous class’: temporarily or permanently excluded, non‑integrated people – a society’s surplus without a designated place or function.13 Elderly women fitted into such a picture along with the wave of recognition of the phenomenon of feminisation of poverty. The world of ‘human remnants’ was formed by majoritarian societies as dark, sick, and invisible.14 As Zygmunt Bauman writes: ‘[…] just as tenuous is the line separating the ‘redundant’ from criminals […] are but two subcategories of “antisocial elements”, differing from each other more by the official classification and the treatment they receive than by their own stance and conduct.’15 ‘A woman, especially when she is not young, is treated as a wreck, a piece of litter,’ said Ewa Woydyłło.16 Mbembe and Michel Agier see the place designated for such people as a dumping ground of people. A place that keeps away from ‘us’ everything that bothers us, away from ‘our’ field of sight.17 A dumping ground is used to make things invisible. In this case, Agier also speaks of ‘human remnants’ located beyond the reach of sight, conscience, and care. Today, being unproductive, being elderly, being outside the latest trends is perceived almost like a crime. And it is accompanied by the desire to take away subjective agency and visibility. As Doris Lessing aptly describes in Summer Before Dusk:

Kate sat on, invisible, apparently, to the waitress and to the other customers: the place was filling now. She was shaking with the […] need to cry. The feeling that no one could see her made her want to shout: Look, I’m here, can’t you see me?18

It does not matter whether you reject the obligation to look young and are sent home or, on the contrary, you take care of yourself and get accused of madness and vanity: in any case. you will be exposed to ridicule and annulment. As early as in the Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir wrote from a soma‑aesthetic perspective:

While the male grows older continuously, the woman is abruptly stripped of her femininity; still young, she loses sexual attraction and fertility, from which, in society’s and her own eyes, she derives the justification of her existence and her chances of happiness19

and this intuition was later confirmed at the social level by Sontag.20 As evidenced by Julia Czernecka’s study, women internalise negative images of their own sex:

[…] undoubtedly, they still perceive an attractive, well‑groomed appearance as a kind of capital, thanks to which a woman, regardless of her age, can achieve various goals in many areas of life. The participants of the study are aware of this; some use this knowledge all the time. Thus, they fit strongly into the patriarchal model of femininity, in which, in order to achieve their goals, women should be pretty, neat, and well‑groomed. Most women are still under a great influence of the belief that external attractiveness, especially in the process of female ageing, becomes synonymous with being still socially visible. Thus, it enables influencing people, receiving many benefits from them, and thus making her own functioning easier in various areas of life.21

Adam Buczkowski explains the reasons:

Women’s ageing is therefore associated with the loss of beauty, which is why the old woman and her body are faced with such a negative cultural evaluation. An old woman’s body is beyond the control of the beauty‑ensuring system and can be frightening if the woman completely surrenders and remains defenceless against ageing and decay. However, if she makes efforts to cover up the bodily ugliness, she is even more frightening, as she reminds us of the inevitability of ageing and loss of beauty. In order to preserve the appearance of beauty, an old woman’s body must remain covered, in contrast to both a young female body, which should remain uncovered to the observers’ eyes, and the old male body, the discovery of which does not carry an equally intense, negative value. Women’s old age – in the cultural sense – is the source of gerontophobia, the consequence of which is the decrease of women’s participation in public life and their symbolic closure in the home, the private space where they play the role of a housewife or a grandmother caring for grandchildren and other family members. In a cultural perspective, male old age can be situated in the context of gerontocracy, as the crowning achievement of life’s success, achieving the highest social position in the professional sphere, business, or politics.22

However, contrary to appearances, they did not suffer from the effects conditioned by changes in the body, but from the social perception of those effects. For centuries, ageing women were subjected to violence such as incarceration in mental institutions, absurd medical procedures, e.g., uterus excision, or lastly – killed. As Mona Chollet claims in Witches, it was mainly menopausal women who died at stakes, on gallows, on scaffolds, in dungeons and deep wells.

It is worth considering whether, in fact, this must be the case. In the social discourse, the visual age and invisibility of elderly women are combined with their exit from the reproductive field. However, Elaine Morgan writes that, from an evolutionary point of view, this never meant the simultaneous loss of the position of the female in groups.

In prehistoric days there is no reason to assume that the inexorable fading of her charms caused her any distress. […] Thus, women alone among primates evolved the menopause because they alone among primates had acquired a method of furthering species survival that had nothing to do with their wombs. They could remember; they could think; and they could communicate their memories and their thoughts.23

In this light, Kristen Hawkes’s ‘grandmother hypothesis’ seems less controversial.24 On the social level, Mona Chollet and Paul B. Preciado point out that grandmothers‑witches (knowledgeable women) could have been victims of the political struggle for spiritual power – having knowledge and experience that could have made them unwanted authorities of a given community. Beside the ‘witch’, an agential matron may be another image of an elderly woman. Authors including Barbara Evans, Paula Caplan, Jamil Hanifi and Beverly Ayers write about this or similar social position.25 As their research indicates, in many parts of the world where women’s social role increases with age, menopause symptoms decrease. In our cultural circle, women associate the somatic symptoms of menopause with ageing and the disappearance of social agency. ‘If science tells them that menopause is a disease, they start feeling as though it is.’26

What if we started capably hacking what has been considered a weakness of image until now? Is it very sad that you are becoming invisible? Possibly. But if you want, this can make you a genius burglar. In the series Lupin, it is Marianne, the mother of the main hero Assane Diop, who takes to heart the words of his friend – an elderly investigative journalist: ‘Women of my age and with my appearance are easy to overlook, like a bag of waste.’27 This impunity is also enjoyed by friends Zuza, Kinga, and Alicja from the Polish series Gang zielonej rękawiczki (Green Glove Gang).28 Of course, I do not encourage anyone to choose such a profession, but I suggest we give ourselves a chance to think about perimenopausal age differently. This intuition is confirmed by an interview with Anu Czerwiński, a fragment of which I will quote:

In the play Orlando. Biografie there’s a great scene in which one of the characters, played by Maria Robaszkiewicz, says that her body is a storehouse of hormones, and then she begins to name them all. The list is very long. These hormones are what a cisgender woman takes over the course of her life. Really. In a way, we are all going through a transition, because each of us is the result of what they eat, what medications they take. We’re also the sum of all our diseases. We’re saturated with the body modifications that we make, only we do not realise it. […] The same is true when you talk to a person who was very fat and suddenly lost weight. That’s transition too. The same goes when you look at your childhood picture because ageing is transition as well. To some extent, each of us experiences what I do on my path.29

Following Jack Halberstam or Catherine Malabou, it can be recalled that ‘a body is always an apparatus of transfer, of circulation, of telepathy between an anatomical reality and symbolic projection’.30 Therefore, perhaps we should redraft the narratives around women’s ageing precisely from a post‑gender perspective? This seems to be a tempting methodological proposal for the future.

1 Kuba Wojewódzki: Season 27 – Robert Górski and Łukasz Simlat, 9 (530), TVN, premiere: 29 October 2019.

2 G. Greer, Zmiana – kobiety i menopauza, transl. M. Golewska, Warszawa 1995, p. 35.

3 M. Chollet, Czarownice. Niezwyciężona siła kobiet, transl. S. Królak, Kraków 2019, pp. 7–39.

4 A. Buczkowski, Zjawisko starości kobiet w perspektywie płci kulturowej, in: Inkluzja czy ekskluzja. Człowiek stary w społeczeństwie, ed. M. Siwiec‑Piłat, B. Kwiatkowska, K. Borysławski, Wrocław 2015., pp. 137–156.

5 Executive producer of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

6 The point was that Rogers danced as well as Fred Astaire. And she would do it ‘backwards’ as seen by the camera, and in high heels. Figuratively: additional difficulties in the careers of women who seem to be in the same situation as men.

7 Kristy Pucho, The Gloriously Queer Afterlife of Death Becomes Her, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/08/death‑becomes‑her‑25th‑anniversary‑meryl‑streep‑goldie‑hawn‑gay‑classic, „Vanity Fair”, publication 3.08.2017 [retrieved: 30.09.2023].

8 The comments I collected from readers of the ‘Pudelek’ portal regarded Małgorzata Rozenek.

9 Alexandra Shulman.

10 E. McBride, Coś nie tak. Kobiecość i wstręt, transl. A. Zano, Warszawa 2022, p. 49.

11 A. Mbembe, Polityka wrogości. Nekropolityka, transl. U. Kropiwiec, K. Bojarska, Kraków 2018, p. 23.

12 Cf. N. Assorodobraj, Początki klasy robotniczej. Problem rąk roboczych w przemyśle polskim epoki stanisławowskiej, Warszawa 1946; M. Frančić, Ludzie luźni w osiemnastowiecznym Krakowie, Wrocław 1967, p. 9; J. Michalski, Problematyka ludności luźnej w pierwszej połowie panowania Stanisława Augusta, in: Cała historia to dzieje ludzi… Studia z historii społecznej ofiarowane profesorowi Andrzejowi Wyczańskiemu w 80‑tą rocznicę urodzin i 55‑lecie pracy naukowej, ed. C. Kuklo, P. Guzowski, Białystok 2004, pp. 311–322; B. Baranowski, Ludzie gościńca w XVII–XVIII w., Łódź 1986, pp. 6, 52.; Idem, O hultajach, wiedźmach i wszetecznicach. Szkice z obyczajów XVII i XVIII wieku, Wydawnictwo Łódzkie, Łódź 1986.

13 Today, G. Standing writes about precariat as a new ‘dangerous class’, however, he places the emergence of the first dangerous classes in early modernism.

14 M. Agier, Managing the Undesirables, Polity, Cambridge 2011, pp. 3–4.

15 Z. Bauman, Europa niedokończona przygoda. Nowe widmo Europy – komentarz 2012, Kraków 2012, p. 153.

16 A. Wittenberg, Czubaszek i Lipińska zachwyciły w programie Lisa. To wyjątek. ‘Kobietę, zwłaszcza niemłodą traktuje się jak wrak, śmieć’, https://natemat.pl/46149,czubaszek‑i-lipinska‑zachwycily‑w-programie‑lisa‑to‑wyjatek‑kobiete‑zwlaszcza‑niemloda‑traktuje‑sie‑jak‑wrak‑smiec, 8.01. 2013 [retrieved: 30.09.2023].

17 M. Agier, Un monde de camps, Paris 2014; A. Mbembe, Polityka wrogości. Nekropolityka, transl. U. Kropiwiec, K. Bojarska, Kraków 2018.

18 G. Greer, Zmiana…, op. cit., p. 43.

19 S. de Beauvoir, Druga płeć, transl. M. Leśniewska, Kraków 2003, p. 634.

20 Sontag S., The Double Standard of Aging, in: Psychology of women, ed. Williams JH., New York 1979, pp. 462–478.

21 J. Czernecka, Rola wyglądu i znaczenie atrakcyjności w życiu starszych kobiet, ‘Dyskursy Młodych Andragogów’ 19/2018, p. 336.

22 A. Buczkowski, op. cit., p. 152.

23 E. Morgan, Pochodzenie kobiety, transl. M. Danicka‑Kosut, Kraków 2023, p. 275, p. 278.

24 Hawkes K, Grandmothers and their consequences. Contribution to Calcano & Fuentes, What makes us Human? Answers from evolutionary anthropology, ‘Evol Anthropol’ 21(5), 10/2012, pp. 182–189.

25 G. Greer, op. cit., pp. 79–110.

26 Angela Saini, Gorsze. Jak nauka pomyliła się co do kobiet, transl. H. Pustuła‑Lewicka, Wołowiec 2022, pp. 303–304.

27 Lupin, dir. G. Kay, France/USA, premiere of episode 7 of part 3: 5 October 2023

28 Gang zielonej rękawiczki, dir. B. Kruhlik and A. Galdamez, Poland, premiere 19.10.2022.

29 A. Burchacki, Anu Czerwiński: Nie ma dla mnie szablonu, ‘Vogue’ 21.07.2022, https://www.vogue.pl/a/anu‑czerwinski‑nie‑ma‑dla‑mnie‑szablonu [retrieved: 14.09.2023].

30 C. Malabou, Wymazana przyjemność. Klitoris i myślenie, transl. A. Dwulit, Kraków 2022, p. 138.

Works cited

  • Agier M., Managing the Undesirables, Cambridge 2011.
  • Agier M., Un monde de camps, Paris 2014.
  • Assorodobraj N., Początki klasy robotniczej. Problem rąk roboczych w Przemśle polskim epoki stanisławowskiej, Warszawa 1946.
  • Baranowski B., Ludzie gościńca w XVII–XVIII w., Wydawnictwo Łódzkie, Łódź 1986.
  • Baranowski B., O hultajach, wiedźmach i wszetecznicach. Szkice z obyczajów XVII i XVIII wieku, Wydawnictwo Łódzkie, Łódź 1986.
  • Bauman Z., Europa niedokończona przygoda. Nowe widmo Europy – komentarz 2012, Kraków 2012.
  • Beauvoir S. de, Druga płeć, transl. M. Leśniewska, Kraków 2003.
  • Buczkowski A., Zjawisko starości kobiet w perspektywie płci kulturowej, in: M. Siwiec‑Piłat, B. Kwiatkowska, K. Borysławski Inkluzja czy ekskluzja. Człowiek stary w społeczeństwie, ed. M. Siwiec‑Piłat, B. Kwiatkowska, K. Borysławski, Wrocław 2015.
  • Chollet M., Czarownice. Niezwyciężona siła kobiet, transl. S. Królak, Kraków 2019.
  • Czernecka J., Rola wyglądu i znaczenie atrakcyjności w życiu starszych kobiet, ‘Dyskursy Młodych Andragogów’ 19/2018.
  • Frančić M., Ludzie luźni w osiemnastowiecznym Krakowie, Wrocław 1967.
  • Greer G., Zmiana – kobiety i menopauza, transl. Małgorzata Golewska, Warszawa 1995.
  • Hawkes K, Grandmothers and their consequences. Contribution to Calcano & Fuentes, What makes us Human? Answers from evolutionary anthropology, ‘Evol Anthropol’ 21(5), 10/2012.
  • Malabou C., Wymazana przyjemność. Klitoris i myślenie, transl. A. Dwulit, Kraków 2022.
  • Mbembe A., Polityka wrogości. Nekropolityka, transl. U. Kropiwiec, K. Bojarska, Kraków 2018.
  • McBride E., Coś nie tak. Kobiecość i wstręt, transl. A. Zano, Warszawa 2022.
  • Michalski J., Problematyka ludności luźnej w pierwszej połowie panowania Stanisława Augusta, in: Cała historia to dzieje ludzi… Studia z historii społecznej ofiarowane profesorowi Andrzejowi Wyczańskiemu w 80‑tą rocznicę urodzin i 55‑lecie pracy naukowej, ed. C. Kuklo, P. Guzowski, Białystok 2004.
  • Morgan E., Pochodzenie kobiety, transl. M. Danicka‑Kosut, Kraków 2023.
  • Saini A., Gorsze. Jak nauka pomyliła się co do kobiet, transl. H. Pustuła‑Lewicka, Wołowiec 2022.
  • Sontag S., The Double Standard of Aging, in: Psychology of women, ed. JH Williams, New York 1979.

Internet

TV

  • Kuba Wojewódzki: Season 27 – Robert Górski and Łukasz Simlat, 9 (530), TVN, premiere: 29 October 2019.

Film

  • Gang zielonej rękawiczki, dir. B. Kruhlik and A. Galdamez, Poland, premiere 19.10.2022.
  • Lupin, dir. G. Kay, France/USA, premiere of episode 7 of part 3: 5 October 2023.
  • Death Becomes Her, dir. R. Zemeckis, USA, 1992.

Monika Weychert 

assistant professor and coordinator of the Journalism and Social Communication major at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities. Since 2016, she has also cooperated with the Institute for Research on Public Space at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In Toruń, she managed an independent mobile gallery, a gallery for…, and others, she was associated with the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw and the Xawery Dunikowski Museum of Sculpture in the Królikarnia Palace – Branch of the National Museum in Warsaw. Curator of several dozen exhibitions. Long-time collaborator of TVP Kultura; author of articles published in numerous scientific and critical journals as well as exhibition catalogues; editor of books, member of AICA.
ORCID: 0000-0003-3941-0800