For decades, menopause was a silenced territory. A biological process that affected millions of women, but that barely found space outside the doctor’s office and the whispers between friends. Assigned to the universe of the intimate, it hid under erroneous ideas that associated it with the end of desire, the decline of beauty and the loss of social value. However, a profound cultural change is reversing that paradigm. The menopause came out of the closet and today it is installed on the public agenda. It is debated in the media, multiplied in books, plays, podcasts and social networks, while at the same time it is claimed as a stage of plenitude and feminine power.
Physics and chemistry. Menopause is the time when menstruation stops and there is a drop in estrogen, hormones that regulate key functions of the body. But its impact goes far beyond biology. It brings together historical, cultural and social conditions that shaped how it was perceived. For much of the 20th century, the mandate was clear: a woman who was no longer fertile had to retreat to the domestic sphere, making herself invisible. At that age, few were still in the job market. As the gynecologist and sexologist tells NEWS Sandra Magirena, author of the book “Return to Me”: “One hundred years ago, women did not live beyond 50, and if they did it was to take care of grandchildren; today, however, at 50 their most productive stage begins.” This shifting of limits, driven by feminism, opened the doors to thinking about comprehensive health beyond the reproductive function.
Medicine also had its turn. In the early 2000s, an international study slowed the advance of hormone replacement therapy by linking it to coronary risks and breast cancer. That brake installed new fears and returned the issue to darkness. However, years later, new scientific analyzes demonstrated severe biases in that work: women over 60 years of age and with multiple risk factors had been medicated with hormones of equine origin that were poorly compatible with human physiology. With the advent of safer estrogens and personalized criteria, medicine regained focus on improving quality of life. Magirena sums it up like this: “Menopause is not a pathology. The only thing that a woman loses is reproductive capacity. The rest, if accompanied well, can be expansion, autonomy and well-being.”
Revolution. This scientific change found a society more determined to break silences. The Argentine pioneer was the doctor Silvina Wittis, with her book “Menopause” in 2015. Then came “Regreso a mí” in 2020, where Magirena proposes pillars for healthy longevity: “Nutrition, sexuality, physical activity and emotional connection.” This wave was joined by communicators, writers and artists who collected the collective experience and brought it to the public stage.
Pop culture responded. Podcasts such as “Encendidas”, hosted by journalists Ingrid Beck and Mariana Carbajal, propose informed conversations with a gender perspective that challenge thousands of listeners.. This format designed for the digital world and its viralization ended up being a theatrical tour throughout the country, with its protagonists bonding with their viewers like two capocomics.
Also on stage, the playwright and actress Julieta Otero thought, developed and premiered “I don’t remember things” (directed by Dalia Gutmann), a fiction that arises from a symptom as common as it is silent, “brain fog.” “Turning 50, approaching old age, having independent children… there I discovered a new freedom,” he says to NOTICIAS. For her, menopause can be “the most fulfilling stage of our lives, because when you lose your memory you also lose your mental workload.” Humor as a tool of emancipation is vital in all his creations. That’s what works for the author of “According to Roxy,” a comedy that in 2016 revolutionized the female spectrum by speaking openly about the B side of motherhood.
The entrepreneur and communicator works along those same lines. Milagros Kirpach, founder of “No Pausa”a project that combines verified information with professional support. Kirpach celebrates that “the conversation exploded,” but warns about “menopause washing”: speeches that promise magical solutions and turn the issue into business. His warning is direct: “Behind every trend there are real women, real bodies, real lives. There is no magic. Evidence and professional care are essential.” Visibility, then, must go hand in hand with rigor.
The performing arts mark the terrain of interaction, explosion and naturalization of menopause throughout society. In addition to Otero, various humorous and musical productions challenge an audience willing to laugh at what was previously hidden. Works like “The Menopause Show,” which operate as franchises and renew their cast every year, define a scene where applause comes before pride.
Captive audience. In parallel, the publishing industry is also experiencing its boom. More than a dozen books published in Argentina and the region display stories, practical guides, personal chronicles and medical dissemination, while international research explores how menopause became a global topic of interest. The sales fury that “Women who no longer bleed” meant, by the journalist Mónica Yemayeland approached from a literary style of writing, explains that it is not a passing phenomenon, but one of empowerment for women.
The figures accompany the centrality of the issue. According to international scientific organizations, by 2030 more than 1.2 billion women in the world will be in the menopausal or postmenopausal stage. And they will do so while maintaining professional careers, leading companies, raising children or reinventing themselves. Menopause stops being an end and becomes a new beginning. Women no longer retreat, they advance.
In Argentina, even public policies recognize the issue, with provincial campaigns and awareness days. Society is beginning to assume that symptoms such as hot flashes, insomnia, mood swings and vaginal dryness are as real as they are treatable, and that keeping them quiet only aggravates the emotional and work impact. Current advertisements reflect this by using direct language and shelving euphemisms or metaphors. If a product prevents vaginal dryness, it is communicated literally. And the blood is red, no longer blue or green.
Perhaps the most profound cultural change is understanding that menopause is not a surrender but a conquest. That desire is not extinguished, it is redefined. That memory that fails can be, as Otero suggests, a door to disobedience. That the body, far from being exhausted, reconciles with its own rhythm. And that fear of the passage of time transforms into pride in everything we have experienced.
After centuries of silence, women shamelessly appropriate their own history. In the words of Kirpach: “We are making history”. In which menopause stops being the last chapter and becomes the beginning of a much more powerful one, that of the woman who no longer asks for permission, knows she is valuable and lights up – as Beck and Carbajal say – in this new paradigm.
