Five menopausal women and a writer walk into a bar...

Well, a hippie-themed 60th birthday party to be exact, where the men huddled around the barbecue, oblivious to its heat, and the women shaded by the pergola frantically flapped floral-print napkins to their faces.

“Just you wait!” one giggled, winking at me, the youngest of the crowd by about three decades. A dry-vagina joke soon came from the corner. Curly wigs bobbed in amusement. I scoffed some olives.

Eager to impress, I seized the opportunity to boast my familiarity with all things menopause. This was met by the kind of excitement usually reserved for red-hot gossip. But after asking whether they had discussed the topic with their daughters, I soon realised that their enthusiasm stemmed from the sense that talking to someone born in 1996 about menopause was a passionate smooch with social taboo.

“But you were a pharmacist, so you understand medical issues.”

I’m Just a Girl

I spent the following few weeks pondering how I felt about the medicalization of menopause. After all, I spend around half my working hours writing about its ‘symptoms’ and ‘treatments’. In trying to legitimise menopause medically, had we inadvertently stripped women of ownership over it socially?

On one hand, menopause’s physiological changes have very real effects (nearly 50 and counting!), which need to be addressed by a healthcare professional when they negatively impact quality of life. Yet paradoxically, framing menopause as a condition risks pathologizing a natural life stage – and in doing so, can reinforce the barriers that prevent women from seeking support.

Let me explain. 

Honey, You’re not Alone

When we frame menopause as a ‘condition’ that comes with ‘symptoms’, we quietly dictate who can talk about it with confidence. Conversations about menopause are kept behind consultation-room doors; authority relocates from women to white coats. Women may believe they need a diagnosis to validate their experiences and feel unable to discuss the topic with other women for fear of not being ‘qualified’. Ironically, 93% of women who have approached an HCP about menopause said they felt dismissed¹, and only 70% say their HCP was sufficiently educated on the topic.²

When women talk about menopause in casual settings, panic softens. Collective recognition replaces fear, fosters a sense of solidarity, and allows women to discuss their experiences, which can inspire those struggling to seek support. It can even discourage the spread of misinformation, as open conversations create space for discussion and debate, and allow for gentle correction of one another.

I believe that refining the language used in communications aimed at women and HCPs is key to ensuring women no longer feel like lay-persons in their own bodies. I’ll be swapping out ‘symptoms’ for ‘experiences’ or ‘changes’, and ‘treatments’ for ‘solutions’ and ‘support’, while continuing to write patient-friendly content, in the hope of empowering more relaxed and colloquial discourse.

Shame Is Off the Menu

But the hush-hush culture born of menopause’s clinicalization has other consequences. Silence makes symptoms feel anomalous. Anomalous feels abnormal. Abnormal feels... shameful.

Society already does more than enough to make women feel ashamed of their bodies – whether it’s their faces, breasts, thighs, stomachs, plus their genitals because who doesn’t love a full house! When we’re ovulating, PMS earns us the label of hysterical; when we’re not, we’re still branded hysterical – just assigned less sexual currency.

Female sexuality is a seesaw, you see.

The last thing I want to do is thicken the shame soup served up by society. So from here on in, I won’t be using diagnostic deficit-based language like ‘depleted’, ‘declined’, ‘impaired’, or ‘instability’ when describing menopause pathophysiology or experiences.

Mum, Are You Ok? 

I'll admit that when I was a teenager, I often questioned whether my mother was compos mentis. Looking back, I can understand that a) I was a not-so-sweet 16-year-old, and b) she was experiencing perimenopause, which left her feeling anxious, stressed, and frankly, pretty down. I wonder whether, if mothers didn’t feel ashamed or underqualified to talk about menopause with their daughters without fear of sounding like they are lamenting a mouldy toe, stronger yet softer relationships could ensue.

Because when we freely talk about menopause with our mothers, grandmothers, sisters, daughters, and friends, it not only educates, but brings us closer. It makes room for empathy and understanding, strengthening the sisterhood for the greater good – and hell yeah to that!

If my fellow writers and I drive HCPs to use language that subtly reframes the attitude toward menopause to a natural stage of life – a rite of passage and shared experience – we can not only educate women, but also encourage them to embrace.  

One day, five menopausal women and a millennial will get tipsy under a pergola, and the mention of menopause won't feel so risqué.

1.      Femtech World. 93% of women feel dismissed when seeking medical help, new survey reveals. Available at: https://www.femtechworld.co.uk/news/93-of-women-feel-dismissed-when-seeking-medical-help-new-survey-reveals/. Last accessed October 2026.

2.      BusinessWire. Most women enter menopause in the dark: New survey reveals stark gaps in hormone health education. Available at: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250506693916/en/Most-Women-Enter-Menopause-in-the-Dark-New-Survey-Reveals-Stark-Gaps-in-Hormone-Health-Education?. Last accessed October 2026.