1703645739
Hot flashes, night sweats, heart palpitations, vulvovaginal dryness, urinary problems, fatigue, insomnia, irritability, anxiety, joint pain, increased risk of osteoporosis or cardiovascular disease… This long list of symptoms often serves as the definition of menopause. This natural stage of biological aging, characterized by the permanent cessation of menstruation, may occur abruptly or gradually sooner or later in a woman’s life. In our societies today, this is the most commonly considered as a hormonal disorder that requires medical monitoring and sometimes treatment.
However, menopause cannot be reduced to these physical symptoms alone. Just as the appearance of menstruation signals the entry into adulthood and, more importantly, womanhood in many cultures – menstruation, fertility and femininity are often inextricably linked – menopause is generally viewed as one of the first signs of aging. However, it can occur very early in a person’s life; Most importantly, if women are affected by menstruation during puberty, what happens to them when they stop?
Nothing more and nothing less than a ghost in the eyes of the American poet Mary Ruefle, as she writes in a text entitled Break and published in the collection My private property (Wave Books, 2016, untranslated): “Whether you were attractive or not, you got used to feeling other people’s eyes on you while you waited for the bus or bought tampons at the pharmacy. They looked at you to determine whether you were attractive or not, so either way you were looked at. Those days are over; From now on, the gaze of others passes through you, you are completely invisible to their eyes, you have become a ghost. You don’t exist anymore. »
Also read the survey: Article reserved for our subscribers Women and menopause: “I realized it could turn your life upside down, but no one talked to me about it.”
Of course, not all menopausal people share Mary Ruefle’s views. Nevertheless, whether experienced as a decline or as a liberation, this experience shows that menopause is at least as much a social phenomenon as it is a biological one.
“The point is not to devalue the physical manifestations that can occur during menopause or to say that menopause does not bring about physiological changesspecifies Cécile Charlap, lecturer in sociology at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès and author of The menopause factory (CNRS Editions, 2019). However, if we take an analytical look at the descriptions of menopause in medical works, we see that they contain social representations that strongly influence the way we perceive this period of life. »
#long #history #menopause