How Naomi Watts found out she was on the brink of menopause…at 36
Dare I Say It by Naomi Watts (Vermilion £22, 256pp)
Gather together a small group of women of a certain age, get the fizz flowing, and you can bet the talk will probably turn to the Big M – as the gang giggles and groans in a spirit of sisterhood. Hot flushes – check.
Thickening waistline – check. Brain fog – check.
The British-born Hollywood actor and producer Naomi Watts was forced to discover all this long before she was ready.
The glamorous star of Mulholland Drive, King Kong, 21 Grams and The Impossible (to name but four) was only 36 and trying to start a family when she was told, to her astonishment and horror, that she was on the brink of what used to be called The Change.
How could that be possible? Wasn’t the menopause for older women, like grandmothers? That shock in the doctor’s surgery was life-changing in more ways than one.
For Watts made it her mission to find out more about this crucial stage in women’s lives, and to help others by sharing what she discovered.
Her book’s subtitle is Everything I Wish I’d Known about Menopause, and reading it is like sitting down with a sister who tells it like it is.
Naomi Watts managed to have two children in spite of the doctor’s diagnosis
Watts discovered that she, like so many others, knew very little about the crucial stage in life that affects about a billion women worldwide –though they experience it to different degrees, with some being totally knocked out of kilter as their bodies seem to melt and their emotions swing from dizzy highs to frightening lows. Others just take it in their stride.
Talking to friends, as well as finding herself consulted by others who heard on the grapevine that she was outspoken on the subject (‘banging on about menopause’ as she puts it), Watts found herself almost pushed into writing her book.
‘It’s intended to be the sort of resource I wish I’d had when I walked out of that doctor’s office in pieces and truly terrified,’ she writes. (Although, as it turned out, Watts – now 56 – was actually in perimenopause, and just managed to have her two children, Sasha and Kai, now 17 and 16, before it was too late.)
Her method is to combine her own personal anecdotes and reflections with the experiences and thoughts of other women she knows, as well as up-to-date medical information from gynaecologists, psychologists, dermatologists and others. It works.
What’s most refreshing is a rare frankness and humour. I didn’t expect to laugh reading a book on this subject. She tells a hilarious story of suddenly realising the attraction for her co-star Billy Crudup – now her husband – was very real, and that she was going to get very frisky indeed.
But she remembers to her horror that she is wearing the giveaway hormone patch that leaves marks when you take it off.
How are you going to get naked with a sexy man when the patch is the menopausal giveaway?
She disappears to try to scrub the marks off, but fails. Then, when she blurts out the truth, Crudup kindly reveals that he has grey hairs on his testicles . . . ‘if that makes you feel any better’. It did!
The book ranges widely, through subjects such as why hot flushes (or ‘flashes’ in the US) happen, hormone therapy, mood swings, sleep problems, memory loss, care for dry skin, nutrition, exercise, clothing, ageism in the workplace and health risks.
But this is far from being a po-faced, angst-ridden whinge about women’s problems. Every chapter ends with a useful, pithy checklist called ‘Things they really should tell us about . . .’, which will be invaluable.
The chapter called ‘Shame’ is especially good – musing as it does on the fact that girls and women often find an almost indefinable shame underpins their lives, from puberty to the time when a women first realises she is (whisper it) desperate to stay looking young.
‘We spend the first part of our lives trying to be more mature and older. Then at some point along the way the question becomes: How do I look younger? How do I stay youthful?’
That’s generally true, but Watts knew Hollywood requires women to remain young and glamorous. She says she never felt the right age.
These days in the UK there is no taboo or stigma in talking about the menopause, yet American reviewers have implied that Watts has done something brave and revolutionary.
She doesn’t mention Davina McCall who is just one well-known name who has written and spoken on the subject, but Cracking the Menopause by Mail contributor Alice Smellie and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup are duly credited, I’m glad to say.
The alleged silence surrounding Menopause is often laid on the ‘patriarchy’ – and Watts joins in that chorus.
But I’d suggest a contributory factor could be the fact that my own generation, long past the Big M, just thought we had to get on with it with no complaints.
Watts’s message is positive and encouraging: ‘How do we make this the most empowering, exciting time of our lives as women?
‘This is when we have the experience in our work and in our bodies to know what we have to offer the world. We don’t need anyone else’s permission.
‘All we need are the tools and the information to unapologetically stride into the powerful, joyful age ahead of us.’