Even given this post-#MeToo climate, it’s doubtful so many of these films would be made were the culture not rethinking what menopause means and can look like. Menopause, clinically defined as a full year without a menstrual period, and perimenopause, the years of hormonal change preceding it, are in the midst of a makeover, with actresses proudly lending their names and creaseless likenesses to menopause and perimenopause ventures. Naomi Watts, who starred in the bonkers 2013 age-gap romance “Adore,” founded Stripes Beauty, a company offering “holistic menopause solutions.” Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop sells Madame Ovary, a supplement to ease hormonal change. Halle Berry is starting RESPIN, an online community focused on menopausal health.
It’s a truism that sex sells. And as these films, shows and corporate enterprises suggest, menopause might be sexy now.
“We are finally uncoupling women’s sexuality from our fertility years,” said Shira Tarrant, a professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies.
But as Tarrant acknowledged, that uncoupling is incomplete. And what exactly are those fertile years? Advances in reproductive technology have significantly increased their span. Actresses, Kidman among them, regularly have children after 40.
Beyond the bedroom, these onscreen bodies are mostly opaque. No character in these recent films mentions hormonal change or suffers the ordinary embarrassments of a hot flash or a “crime scene” period. If this new visibility is liberatory, it is also very limited. Are you perhaps a woman who is slim, conventionally attractive, and more often than not white? Congratulations, you can represent your sex life for just a little longer. In these movies, limbs are lithe, faces smooth. The breasts are like military haircuts, high and tight. Thanks to advances in dermatology, cosmetics and surgery, women can be sexy at almost any age. As long as we look 32 forever.
Very occasionally, an imperfect body makes its way onscreen — Diane Keaton’s fleeting nude scene in the 2003 romantic comedy “Something’s Gotta Give,” Emma Thompson’s open robe in 2022’s “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” — but typically attractiveness equates to porelessness. This is the gruesome crux of the 2024 horror comedy “The Substance,” in which Demi Moore’s former starlet undergoes gooey agonies to retain her youth and beauty, birthing (asexually) a younger, hotter self.