Menopause Is So Hot Right Now
The DailyYou’re reading The New Yorker’s daily newsletter, a guide to our top stories, featuring exclusive insights from our writers and editors. Sign up to receive it in your in-box.In today’s newsletter, the shock of menopause—and why each generation thinks they’re the first to experience it. And then:Bill McKibben on Canada as an outpost of sanityWhy Americans are no longer moved by rhetoricThe surprise of the baseball movie “Eepuhus”A growing number of physicians are studying and treating menopause. They’re known, among themselves at least, as the “menoposse.” Photo illustration by Joan Wong; Source photograph by Kinga Krzeminska / GettyRebecca MeadStaff writerThe first time I heard a contemporary of mine mention menopause, I was sitting on a playground bench, watching my middle-schooler shoot hoops. “Menopause kicks your ass,” my friend, a yoga teacher, said as she fanned her face helplessly. The remark was memorable because it was so singular, but, within a year or two, just about every conversation with a woman my age would land—usually sooner rather than later—upon comparative symptomology: hot flashes, brain fog, exhaustion, and more. And upon the indignity of it all.A sense of disorientation is a common theme in the three recently published menopause books that I review this week: it turns out that menopause comes as a shock, no matter how worldly a woman might be—and no matter the fact that every woman her senior has, one way or another, already confronted the challenge. Menopause is “having a moment,” a physician writes in an introduction to one of the books. But, as I discovered in my research for the piece, menopause—or at least its treatment—has had many moments before. (To give but one example, Gail Sheehy broke the silence on menopause with her best-seller “The Silent Passage,” all the way back in 1992.) To note that popular interest in menopause seems to come in surges is not to dismiss the power of those waves—or to dismiss the swamped sense of powerlessness that menopause often causes—but only to notice how hard it seems to be for the culture at large to take menopause as seriously as such a significant stage of life deserves.For individual women, the onset of perimenopause is usually hard to pinpoint: as each author notes in her own way, it can be difficult to clock the possibility that an encroaching feeling of ill-being is caused by a hormonal imbalance, rather than by the considerable pressures that often attend working, child-raising, and relationship-nurturing. Nor, in recent decades, have women been offered much of a sense that symptoms of perimenopause could be alleviated. Today, however, more than two decades after a breast-cancer scare deterred many women—and their doctors—from trying hormone-replacement therapy, newer research indicates that it can be salutary in treating both familiar and unfamiliar symptoms. Perhaps this is, finally, the generation that will make menopause a welcome and enduring part of the conversation, well beyond the playground bench. Phew.Read or listen to the story »The Briefing RoomCanada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, speaks during the Canada-U.S. Economic Summit, in February, 2025.Photograph by Cole Burston / Bloomberg / GettyJustin Trudeau challenges Donald Trump: Read Bill McKibben on how Canada’s outgoing Prime Minister has become a beacon of sanity amid American threats of annexation and taxation »Trump walks back his tariffs plan: The Administration has now paused tariffs on most goods coming from Canada and Mexico until at least April 2nd. Revisit John Cassidy’s analysis of the volatile trade war »The Administration prepares to shut down the D.O.E.: The American Federation of Teachers said on Wednesday that the Education Department is “legally required” to distribute federal funds for students in need. Read Jessica Winter on what dismantling the agency could mean for kids with disabilities »Columbia University loses federal funding: Citing the school’s inadequate protection of Jewish students, the Administration announced that it would cancel four hundred million dollars in grants and contracts. Read Andrew Marantz on how Columbia was torn apart over the war in Gaza, and Nathan Heller on the crisis within higher education »More Top StoriesCan Americans Still Be Convinced That Principle Is Worth Fighting For?“Eephus” Is as Surprising as the Baseball Pitch It’s Named ForThe Resounding Silences of “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl”Daily CartoonCartoon by Jason Adam KatzensteinCopy link to cartoonCopy link to cartoonLink copiedShopShopMore Fun & GamesPlay today’s bite-size puzzle. A clue: Spanish island with a famous club scene. Five letters.P.S. When Sarah Manguso began to experience a strange, possibly perimenopausal symptom—anorgasmia, or the sudden disappearance of climax—doctors were unhelpful. She decided to figure it out herself.Erin Neil contributed to this edition.
In today’s newsletter, the shock of menopause—and why each generation thinks they’re the first to experience it. And then:
- Bill McKibben on Canada as an outpost of sanity
- Why Americans are no longer moved by rhetoric
- The surprise of the baseball movie “Eepuhus”
Rebecca Mead
Staff writer
The first time I heard a contemporary of mine mention menopause, I was sitting on a playground bench, watching my middle-schooler shoot hoops. “Menopause kicks your ass,” my friend, a yoga teacher, said as she fanned her face helplessly. The remark was memorable because it was so singular, but, within a year or two, just about every conversation with a woman my age would land—usually sooner rather than later—upon comparative symptomology: hot flashes, brain fog, exhaustion, and more. And upon the indignity of it all.
A sense of disorientation is a common theme in the three recently published menopause books that I review this week: it turns out that menopause comes as a shock, no matter how worldly a woman might be—and no matter the fact that every woman her senior has, one way or another, already confronted the challenge. Menopause is “having a moment,” a physician writes in an introduction to one of the books. But, as I discovered in my research for the piece, menopause—or at least its treatment—has had many moments before. (To give but one example, Gail Sheehy broke the silence on menopause with her best-seller “The Silent Passage,” all the way back in 1992.) To note that popular interest in menopause seems to come in surges is not to dismiss the power of those waves—or to dismiss the swamped sense of powerlessness that menopause often causes—but only to notice how hard it seems to be for the culture at large to take menopause as seriously as such a significant stage of life deserves.
For individual women, the onset of perimenopause is usually hard to pinpoint: as each author notes in her own way, it can be difficult to clock the possibility that an encroaching feeling of ill-being is caused by a hormonal imbalance, rather than by the considerable pressures that often attend working, child-raising, and relationship-nurturing. Nor, in recent decades, have women been offered much of a sense that symptoms of perimenopause could be alleviated. Today, however, more than two decades after a breast-cancer scare deterred many women—and their doctors—from trying hormone-replacement therapy, newer research indicates that it can be salutary in treating both familiar and unfamiliar symptoms. Perhaps this is, finally, the generation that will make menopause a welcome and enduring part of the conversation, well beyond the playground bench. Phew.
The Briefing Room
Justin Trudeau challenges Donald Trump: Read Bill McKibben on how Canada’s outgoing Prime Minister has become a beacon of sanity amid American threats of annexation and taxation »
Trump walks back his tariffs plan: The Administration has now paused tariffs on most goods coming from Canada and Mexico until at least April 2nd. Revisit John Cassidy’s analysis of the volatile trade war »
The Administration prepares to shut down the D.O.E.: The American Federation of Teachers said on Wednesday that the Education Department is “legally required” to distribute federal funds for students in need. Read Jessica Winter on what dismantling the agency could mean for kids with disabilities »
Columbia University loses federal funding: Citing the school’s inadequate protection of Jewish students, the Administration announced that it would cancel four hundred million dollars in grants and contracts. Read Andrew Marantz on how Columbia was torn apart over the war in Gaza, and Nathan Heller on the crisis within higher education »
- Can Americans Still Be Convinced That Principle Is Worth Fighting For?
- “Eephus” Is as Surprising as the Baseball Pitch It’s Named For
- The Resounding Silences of “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl”
Daily Cartoon
P.S. When Sarah Manguso began to experience a strange, possibly perimenopausal symptom—anorgasmia, or the sudden disappearance of climax—doctors were unhelpful. She decided to figure it out herself.
Erin Neil contributed to this edition.
