It's time to reclaim the menopause, says MARIELLA FROSTRUP: Forget the shame and tedious symptoms, you could be entering the best years of your life (and even A-lister Naomi Watts agrees)

When Naomi Watts proclaims that menopause is a badge of honor, it's a sign that the tides have finally turned in favour of the older woman. 

For three thousand years menopause has been shameful. But now, in 2025, are you even a celebrity if you aren't proudly and joyfully proclaiming your lack of hormones? 

I've had my finger on the weak pulse of the subject of women's midlife health for the last decade, and during that time it's gone from tedious and toxic to the top of everyone's hotlist. 

This week, our US book, Menopause Is Hot, which I wrote with journalist Alice Smellie, is released in the US, with a foreword by the incredible Naomi. 

The topic of diminishing hormones has finally gone global and there's a host of reasons why menopause might just be the best thing that happens to you. What's more, this is a gang that everybody wants to join.

As I say, it’s absolutely not always been this way. Since the time of the Greek philosophers, women's bleeding - and its stopping - has been regarded as, variously: unclean, poisonous, insanity-creating and generally repulsive. 

The forced shame of being an older woman, along with the raft of horrendous cures thrown our way, from leeches to ice water injections to chloroform, means that it's hardly surprising we barely spoke about the subject.

In 2015 I first wrote about menopause and then in 2018 I made a very well-received BBC programme about it. I assumed that I'd done enough and left that particular subject alone (there's still plenty to campaign about when it comes to women's rights!). 

Then, five short years ago, just before Covid, Alice and I visited a five-star hotel in rural Hampshire. Along with the blissful massages and divine food, there was a menopause seminar, hosted by a well-known UK duo. 

We both sat in burgeoning horror as one by one intelligent and articulate women stood up and said that they were 'just going to get through it'and that they 'weren't going to give in' to HRT - or MHT as it's known in the US. 

There was an overwhelming air of baffled embarrassment. That was the night that we decided to write the book. Women still clearly didn't know what menopause was or what to do about it.

In 2021 our first book Cracking the Menopause was published, in 2022 we launched a campaign group Menopause Mandate, and in October 2024 I was awarded the title of Menopause Employment Ambassador by the UK Government. 

Fast forward five years, and our US book - significantly updated to include Stateside experts and interviewees, about the subject is just launching in the US. We are beyond honoured that an excerpt has been published in Oprah Daily. 

The stopping of monthly periods, which is a natural progression through which every woman will go at some point in her life, is finally recognised, and even seen as a reason for celebration.

So, what are the positives? Why the joy? Well, first of all, the menopausal transition is a liminal phase, a few years of hormonal disruption. 

What’s more, most of the (many potential) symptoms can be treated, and the long-term effects (on heart, bones and brain) of a lack of oestrogen counteracted with a combination of lifestyle and MHT - menopausal hormone therapy.

Most of us start to notice the signs of perimenopause - the years before the final cut-off - in our early to mid-forties, usually with subtle symptoms; changes to periods, insomnia and anxiety. 

Further symptoms, and there are said to be at least 34 (we counted 50 in a recent article we wrote) include hot flashes, night sweats, dry skin, dry eyes, increased UTIs, pain during sex, headaches...the list is seemingly endless. 

The average age of menopause - you are said to have 'gone through' menopause 12 months after your last period - is 51, and you are then postmenopausal for the rest of your life.

But there's masses you can do to alleviate physical and emotional symptoms. The global consensus is that for the majority of women, MHT has more benefits than risks. 

For those who cannot (who have had hormonal cancers) or do not wish to take it, there are many other medications and options available.

It's vital that menopause is approached holistically. This is a fantastic time to consider lifestyle, not just for the short-term benefits and relief from menopause symptoms but for health longevity, which is the buzzword of 2025; living longer without chronic health conditions. 

Muscle, heart and bone health are all directly boosted by increasing exercise, giving up smoking, moderating drinking and improving diet. In addition, you reduce your risk of illnesses such as cancer.

Other benefits of menopause, and this might seem obvious, is relief from periods and the worry about getting pregnant, after years of either trying to or trying not to! No PMT, no bleeding….no inexplicable crying one day a month.

We did a great deal of research to try and establish the position of midlife women - historically written off as being pointless and/or poisonous, and to our surprise, there's a raft of studies showing that this can be the most exciting time of our lives.

We traditionally think of males as having midlife crises. Well, it may interest you to know that most divorces - 70% - are instigated by women. 

Research has also shown that we are more likely to be happy in midlife; we're more in control of our personal lives and finances (not always, obviously) and we frequently have more freedom. 

We lose our need to tend and cherish and rather find renewed ambition and fire for new experiences. Up to our seventies we are more likely to have accrued wealth, which we are keen to spend (not that this is reflected in advertising by the way), so we are economically at our strongest.

But it's also the case that women are refusing to be pigeon-holed in that grey elephants' graveyard of uselessness to which we've historically been consigned. 

You can't expect us to work, do the bulk of domestic chores and then agree to societal retirement just because we have fewer fertility hormones.

Increasingly, we're recognising that the patriarchy isn't - horrors - correct about us being less productive and less attractive just because we have a few more wrinkles. It started as a trickle, but now it's a flood of awareness that midlife isn't an endgame.

Women are finally moving - slowly - like a great hormonal glacier - towards more equity, although I have to accept that the gender gap sadly isn't going to close in my lifetime. 

As Halle Berry talks about menopause on Capitol Hill and Drew Barrymore has her first hot flash on telly, is it any wonder that the latest a-list must-have is a proud shout out about women's later life health? 

It's taken three thousand years, but menopause has finally come in from the cold and is the hottest topic around. And we're here for it!

Menopause Is Hot by Mariella Frostrup and Alice Smellie is available now