Naomi Watts dares to say it

There was a time, not too long ago, when women would try to talk to the media about menopause and nobody would pick up the phone, answer the email, check their DMs, whatever. This is why there’s been so much confusion and fear, and also shame and embarrassment, about a natural process that women go through. This is also why there’s very little research, relative to other health issues, on menopause. 

Where I live in Toronto, the Sinai Health Foundation launched the Hot and Bothered campaign last fall to end the stigma and close the gap in women’s health. The campaign’s goal is to “create the Centre for Mature Women’s Health at Mount Sinai Hospital”, aiming to become the “most comprehensive centre of its kind in the world [to ensure that] more women than ever before are heard and cared for, through all of life’s stages”. This is a program prioritising “mature women’s health” after centuries of society disappearing women after a certain age. 

So to go back to conversations around menopause and how much play this gets in the media, it’s been great to see Naomi Watts the last couple of weeks with all kinds of air time on talk shows etc as she’s promoting her book, Dare I Say It which is specifically about her menopause experience. Like I said, up until recently, when an actress was on a press tour, if it wasn’t about a movie or a TV show or a brand deal, it was also never about menopause. 

“Our audience doesn’t want to hear about that…”

“We’ll lose people’s interest…”

“This is too niche…”

I’m sure this has been repeated in pitch meetings over and over again for decades. Remember, there was a time when pregnant women weren’t allowed on television and a fertile woman is the most valued woman, historically, so a women with a microphone talking about perimenopause symptoms? Practically a mortal sin.

This is slowly changing and, hopefully, more progress can be made. But, you know, in America with this new administration and its supporters who so obviously hate women, and a leader who is disgusted by women who can’t be permanent sex objects, it will get harder to make advancements in women’s health. 

So Naomi’s mission is important. Hopefully more women can and will join her. Because women experience menopause differently. My perimenopausal symptoms are not the same as hers – she and I had a brief discussion about this when I interviewed her last year. The feeling we all share, though, at least I think so, is that there are days when you wake up not recognising your own body, sometimes your body changes every single day. That’s been what I’ve been going through over the last year or so and especially the last couple of weeks. Like my breast size is different every day! On Tuesday, for example, my tits were so big I was like… did I just wake up from enhancement surgery? It is so uncomfortable, I can barely run because they’re so sore. The next morning? I swear they had deflated by 50%. Seriously every morning right now, when my alarm goes off the first thing I do is grab my own tits to check on what they’ve decided to be today. 

Is this too much information for you? Sorry to be this blunt but your discomfort means a lot less to me if someone else out there can relate. And, obviously, Naomi doesn’t give a sh-t either since she’s out here talking about what used to be considered taboo, like the time one of her kids found her vibrator, and also what happened before she and Billy Crudup spent their first night together. 

Per PEOPLE:

“When she fell for her co-star in the Netflix series Gypsy in 2017 — now husband Billy Crudup, 56 — she had a moment of panic before they spent their first night together. In her book, she recalls ducking into the bathroom, attempting to scratch off the hormone patch she’d been wearing and then blurting out to Crudup, “I didn’t want you to see it because then you would know I’m in early menopause, which means I am old.”

His response? He smiled, offered to help, and then pointed out that they were the same age. “If it makes you feel better,” The Morning Show actor told her, “I’ve got gray hairs on my balls.” Those were, she writes “the most romantic words I’ve ever heard, onscreen or off.”

It’s a great story – and there are probably more of them in her book, Dare I Say It, available now.