Menopause is so hot right now If you had asked 20-year-old me to explain what "perimenopause" was, I would have stared at you blankly. Honestly, I would have struggled to even tell you much about menopause. It was never a mainstream topic of conversation and studies have found most women were never educated about it.
Indeed, I'm pretty sure I learned far more at school about Henry VIII's wives than what I could expect from my own body as I got older. Thankfully, things are changing. The stigma is being shaken away from menopause and it's finally being taken seriously.
Celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Halle Berry, Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama have spoken up about their experiences and the need to have open conversations about this rite of passage. The actor Naomi Watts has a lifestyle brand devoted to menopause called Stripes Beauty, which was recently acquired by a luxury private equity firm. Other brands are popping up in the space as people realize that catering to menopause symptoms is a lucrative market.
Menopause is also being taken more seriously by the scientific community. In March, for example, first lady Jill Biden announced a new White House women's health initiative looking into whether it is possible to delay menopause and the health issues that come with it. The announcement started with a droll but depressing story about misogyny in medical research.
"In the early 1970s, researchers in the US observed that women who had gone through menopause – therefore.