Author Harper Ford on how she discovered that there was so much more to the topic of the menopause than you’d ever know . . .
My latest romcom Hot Not Bothered came from a place of frustration, as did my first one Divorced Not Dead. Why is nobody talking about dating in your fifties? And why is nobody talking about menopause? Sure, there’s been some high-profile celebrities talking about the latter, particularly in the last couple of years. But before that, the discussion about menopause – and the average woman’s average knowledge of the subject – was an arid desert sweeping across women’s lives. In fact, that’s a pretty good metaphor for the way menopause has been characterised for women, too. A time of the end of something, of things lost, of things drying up and becoming barren. That was certainly my experience of the topic when I began to experience symptoms in my forties. Menopause seemed like a catastrophic final phase of something that was represented as plentiful and fecund, until this dreadful roadblock of menopause. All in all, it felt to me that menopause was shown as a disaster.
So, why write a comedy about something so awful? Well, that’s where I feel my romcoms tend to lie, in that grey area between the ridiculous and the downright awful, where we can laugh at our problems at the same time as honouring them. That had been my experience too, of times when I felt like my life was coming to an end, to days when the symptoms or things doctors said were so insane that you just had to laugh about it (or you’d cry). And once I started interviewing women about their experiences of menopause for my research for the book, I realised I wasn’t alone. I also found out that my knowledge of the topic was severely lacking, as the range of multitudinous symptoms and experiences of women in this time of their lives was so vast and also vastly different from my own. The average person’s knowledge of menopause might be hot flushes and no more periods, and that’s about it. But what I knew from my own experience was that it was a bit more complicated than that, and once I began hearing real women’s lived experiences of this phase in their lives, I discovered that there was so much more to the topic than you’d ever know from a cursory Google.
And that was something that drove me in writing this book, and my previous romcom. Representations of women in their fifties in fiction and in the media in general seemed to me to be woefully lacking. I remember hearing about actors in their fifties struggling to get decent parts, if they were women, that there were so few stories focused on women at this time in their lives, that they were seen as past useful: too young to be a comforting granny figure as yet, and also too old to be childbearing and/or sexy. Divorced Not Dead was my attempt to blow out of the water that all too common view of women in their fifties. Shock horror: women over fifty have sex. They go on dates, they have romance and they have sex lives. It’s true! And menopause was another leviathan I wanted to confront: most people are aware that women go through menopause – but what the hell does that actually mean? What does it involve? And how are women treated during this thing that happens to most of half of the world’s population?
The answers to those questions were frustratingly obscure. Not many women talk about it openly, as it often feels like an embarrassing, personal subject. But to me, this was just another lack in society’s representation of women my age: for example, I remember seeing an ad on Facebook once for a women’s exercise regime, and it had a series of cartoon-style illustrations to represent each decade of an adult woman’s life. The woman in the picture of fifty to sixty had – get this – grey hair in a bun, and was wearing twinset and pearls. She looked like a more decrepit version of Aunt Flo from Bod! Yes, really! I was fifty and I was looking at this little old granny figure and thinking, who the hell is this woman?! Like Miss Marple on a bad day. And was a million miles from who I am, and who all of the women my age that I know are too. Hot Not Bothered is my version of women my age, in all their variety and complexity. Menopause itself isn’t easy, but it’s not a disaster either: it’s the end of some things, but it’s also the beginning of other things, a phase in a woman’s life that is so often characterised as past it. I hope my books show quite clearly that the only thing women in their fifties are past is giving a damn what people think of them, as they get on with enjoying the new freedoms of this pretty bloody wonderful phase of their lives. There’s a reason why the words fifty and fabulous go so well together. I hope Heidi and her friends in Hot Not Bothered can show you why.
(c) Harper Ford
About Hot Not Bothered by Harper Ford:
Hot Not Bothered is the new hilarious, no-holds-barred and heartfelt novel about the rollercoaster of menopause, from hot flushes to HRT and everything in-between.
It’s a bloody mess but she ain’t stressed…
Heidi is tired. Tired, grumpy and hot as hell.
Juggling the stresses of her job whilst parenting two children is proving chaotic, and Heidi has well and truly run out of f**ks to give.
When her menopause symptoms skyrocket, Heidi dives headfirst into a sea of comically contradictory advice, absurd doctors’ appointments, and the wild world of online support forums that range from cult-like to totally bloody batshit.
But the last straw comes when she receives a patronising company-wide email from HR supporting ‘women of a certain age’. Heidi accidentally hits ‘reply all’ when calling out the bullshit, only to suddenly find herself the inadvertent new face of the menopause in her office…
Don’t miss the new hilarious novel about the menopause, second (or third) chance love – and the unexpected ways we can find our tribe at any age.
Order your copy of Hot Not Bothered by Harper Ford online here.
