'the substance' is summer's definitive menopausal text

and somehow i've become an expert!

I haven’t even had a hot flash yet, but somehow I’ve become the target audience for everything menopause.

My Insta ads are almost entirely for products to address menopausal hair loss and I’m becoming increasingly anxious that this is a problem I have, even though before the ads, I wouldn’t have thought so.

i screenshot these ads from three different companies on one insta scroll this morning

If it’s not hair loss, then it’s the menopause belly that I can address through Kourtney Kardashian’s GLP-1 probiotics or this purple plastic “reformer” for “pilates.” Oddly, the gals in the Pilapod ads are not menopausal at all. Their abdominals have not been yet been ripped apart by pregnancy and they still have the core strength to fold in half and make it look easy. It’s inspiring really. I asked my Pilates instructor and BFF Margaret if I need this plastic “reformer” for my living room to get the six pack I’ve always dreamed of and she was like, what the hell is wrong with you, you’re gonna hurt yourself immediately. (She’s the best.) (And not wrong.)

Recently I went to the gynecologist to have my IUD swapped because even though the algorithm believes my vagina is about to fall off and blow through the streets of Chicago like a tumbleweed, I could still get pregnant and what a horror show that would be, me lugging my aging, pregnant body around the office, farting everywhere. (And then being handed a baby at the end of it!!!!!) Mid swap, the doctor insisted on swabbing my cervix for chlamydia and then launched into a sort of “use it or lose it” speech between my legs that left me wondering if I shouldn’t have said that I definitely didn’t have chlamydia, because if I had chlamydia, at least I could prove I was “using it” enough for her liking. The talk’s central thesis seemed to be that my expiration date for penetrative sex is much sooner than I think that it is, and, honestly, I didn’t think it was soon at all?

I left feeling confused and then sort of angry. I’m forty-four! In the words of Selina Meyer, “I’m still a young woman! Look at my hands, look at my neck!” And! I couldn’t help but wonder, why did Sex and the City not prepare me for this?! Samantha Jones had one fucking hot flash and it was chemo related!!!

“Bad enough I had to lose my hair, now I have my face running down my couture!”

But if the early aughts didn’t provide enough in the way of instructional menopause content, the 2020s are delivering. My bestie Rachel worked on this forthcoming book with Brooke Shields, Naomi Watts has created an entire menopausal beauty line featuring products with fetching names like “Vag of Honor,” and Summer 2024 delivered at least three well-considered and frequently hilarious pieces of menopausal art that I present to you now.

Prepare yourself.

here’s a book about dedicating your life to your children and then (lol!) they they grow up and leave you

All the women I know read Sandwich by Catherine Newman this summer. It’s a story about a family on their annual summer vacation and it’s both very funny and very poignant. The main character, Rocky, is literally sandwiched between her children and her aging parents, and she’s feeling hot and hormonal and quite reflective as her kids (one in college, one post-college) are moving further into their own lives and her parents are moving closer to death. It beautifully captures what a strange moment in a woman’s life this is and got me in my feelings about how my days of single motherhood are drawing to a close. Being a mother is such a strange (and wonderful?) experience and it’s hard for me to picture how this kiddo I’ve been with for the past fifteen years (plus the nine months of pregnancy farting) is going to up and leave in three-ish years. But reading books like this is comforting—a good reminder that I’m not the first, or the last, mother to face this, and, well, gals, you walk on.

or how about a book about boning everything you can before your vagina falls off

I mentioned All Fours by Miranda July to one of my male colleagues in a “this isn’t the book for you, but I’d love to hear your take on it if it was” sort of way, and he asked the internet what the book was about and this is what happened:

I was like, wow, I would not have said it was about the colonization of women’s bodies by their children (and, oops, sorry male colleague if your algorithm is also now filled with menopausal ads). While I don’t always connect with July because she’s an artist and I’m just like, a person who writes things, I thought this exploration of what it means to have your sexuality slipping through your fingers was thought-provoking. Can I tell you that the unnamed narrator really prioritizes a midlife fuckfest without it being a spoiler?

or try this movie that takes the absurdities of female beauty standards to their ultimate conclusion and there’s blood everywhere

The Substance is absolutely bonkers. Know that going into it and then just enjoy the ride. Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging Hollywood celeb, who, in a tale as old as time, is being pushed out of Hollywood because she’s too old. Then she’s offered THE SUBSTANCE, which gives her the chance to create a younger version of herself and then share a life with them. You’re never gonna believe it, but shit goes awry. This movie is absolutely obsessed with butts as the symbol of youth, and I have to tell you, I mourned, in real time, while eating soft pretzel bites dipped in nacho cheese, that my butt never, ever, ever looked like this.

never.

This film is not subtle and is frequently very gross and it’s very meta with Elisabeth eventually turning quite monstrous as she attempts to do the opposite, a very clear parallel to our obsession with plastic surgery, image, etc. And it got me thinking about what we sacrifice of our current selves when we are obsessed with not only youth and beauty, but with the desire to be different than we actually are.

I have to tell you, I like being forty-four. I have amazing friends and community that I’ve spent years building and my kid can finally make his own dinner. I know what I want more than I probably ever have and understand more fully what sort of compromises I’m going to have to make to get there. I’ve done therapy and am finally setting some boundaries and allowing people to be disappointed when I say no. I know what my strengths are and where I struggle and who to call when I need support. But rarely are those the things we’re taught to value or seek! But the only way I’d be twenty-five again is if I could know everything I know now, and, welp life doesn’t really work that way, so I guess I’ll get me some hair vitamins and some thigh estrogen cream and call it a day.