From hot flashes to hysteria, film and TV have long represented menopause as scary, emotional and messy.

Recently, celebrities have been sharing their personal menopause experiences on social media, helping to re-frame the conversation in popular culture.

We are also seeing more stories about menopause on television, with real stories and depictions that show greater empathy for the person going through it.

Menopause is having a moment. But will it help women?

The change onscreen

This is not what we’re used to seeing on our screens. Countless sitcoms, from All in the Family (1971–79) to Two and a Half Men (2003–15) have used the menopause madness trope for laughs.

Retro sitcom That ‘70s Show (1998–2006) used mom Kitty’s menopause journey as comedic fodder for multiple episodes. When she mistakes a missed period for pregnancy, Kitty’s surprise menopause diagnosis results in an identity crisis alongside mood swings, hot flashes and irritability.

But the audience is not meant to empathise. Instead, the focus is on how Kitty’s menopause impacts the men in her family. Having to navigate Kitty’s symptoms, her veteran husband likens the experience to war: “I haven’t been this frosty since Korea”.

Even when male characters are not directly involved, women are determined to reject menopause because they see it as a marker of age that signals a loss of desirability and social worth. In Sex and the City (1998–2004), Samantha describes herself as “day-old bread” when she presumes her late period signifies menopause.

This is a popular framing of menopause in post-feminist TV of the 1990s and early 2000s. While the menstruating body is constructed as uncontrollable and in need of management, the menopausal body requires management and maintenance to reject signals of collapse.

These storylines erase the genuine experiences of confusion, discomfort and transformation that come with menopause.

A cultural moment arrives

Since 2015, stories of menstruation have increased in popular culture.

Series like comedy Broad City (2014–19) and comedy-drama Better Things (2016–22) directly call out the lack of menopause representations. When Abbi in Broad City admits she “totally forgot about menopause”, a woman responds “Menopause isn’t represented in mainstream media. Like, no one wants to talk about it”.

Similarly, in Better Things, while watching her three daughters stare at the TV Sam laments: “No one wants to hear about it, which is why nobody ever prepared you for it”.

And lack of preparation becomes a key theme for perimenopausal Charlotte in the Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That … (2021–) when she has a “flash period”.

Fleabag (2016–19) included a groundbreaking monologue about menopause delivered by Kristen Scott-Thomas, playing a successful businesswoman. She describes menopause as “horrendous, but then it’s magnificent”.

[…] your entire pelvic floor crumbles, and you get fucking hot, and no one cares. But then you’re free. No longer a slave. No longer a machine with parts.

Scripted by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, this celebrated monologue critiques the post-feminist notion of striving to be the “idealised feminine body”. Through this new feminist lens, menopause is acknowledged as both painful – physically and emotionally – and necessary for liberation.

Today’s menopause on screen

Alongside more recent series like The Change (2023), multiple documentaries including The (M) Factor (2024), and arguably even films like The Substance (2024), social media has become a prolific space for raising awareness about menopause.

Celebrities use social media to share tales of perimenopause and menopause, often in real time.

Last year, actor Drew Barrymore experienced her “first perimenopausal hot flash” during her talk show.

And ABC News Breakfast guest host, Imogen Crump, had to pause her news segment, saying

I could keep stumbling through, but I’m having such a perimenopausal hot flush right now, live on air.

Both Barrymore and Crump shared clips of their live segments to their social media pages, to challenge stigma and create conversations. Crump even posted to LinkedIn to raise awareness in a professional setting.

In a podcast interview clip shared to Instagram, writer and skincare founder, Zoë Foster Blake describes perimenopause as a “real mental health thing”, because of the lack of awareness. Recalling conversations with other perimenopausal women, Foster Blake says “We all think we’re crazy. We don’t know what the fuck is going on”.

Feeling “crazy” is a constant theme in these conversations. As actor and menopause awareness advocate Naomi Watts points out, this is largely thanks to Hollywood. Despite the stigmatising media stereotype of “crazy lady that shouts”, Watts argues that with “support and community”, women experiencing perimenopause and menopause “can thrive”.

In fact, Watts believes menopause should be celebrated: “we know ourselves better, we’re wiser for our cumulative experiences”.

Medical professionals like American doctors Marie Clare Haver and Corinne Menn have been well-positioned to share their expertise and experiences via social media. They are catching and helping fuel a wave of advocacy and awareness for midlife women’s health.

Building community

After watching the menopause madness trope on our screens for decades, we are now seeing perimenopause and menopause depicted with more empathy. These depictions allow viewers – those who menstruate, who have menstruated, and who know menstruators – to feel seen and be informed.

By sharing their experiences on social media and adding to these new screen stories, celebrities are building a community that makes the menopausal journey less lonely and helps those on it remember their worth.

Bridgette Glover, PhD Candidate in Media and Communications, University of New England

Image credits: Shutterstock 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.