We understand when teens going through puberty run wild and crash cars, when pregnant women feel tired or unusually hungry, and even when grandparents have to take a little while longer getting up the stairs. No one expects these types of people to get on with their lives as usual. Juvenile delinquents receive more lenient treatment when convicted of a crime, pregnant women get time off work and their own parking spots close to the entrance at Target, and no one ever asks grandpa to carry heavy boxes up to the attic. To speak of these concessions does not seem shameful, as they are all natural signs of growing up and growing older. Why, then, are we afraid to make allowances and accommodations for women going through the natural aging process of menopause? Many women who reach the age of menopause are suddenly thrown into a world full of strange symptoms and changes in mood, which no one truly warned her about, and no one will discuss now! As though there is something shameful inherent in the process of aging for women. As though women are losing a part of what makes them female. Menopause has become a medicalized topic, which Americans understand as the symptoms of the cessation of menses, but the attempts to better understand menopause through science have not made us more comfortable with the topic.
American culture seems to have a fear of the aging process, which Margaret Lock believes has to do with what we characterize as normal. “In North America we worship at the alter of youth: normality means youth and vigor, regardless of gender…normal means to be of reproductive age” (Lock 1993: 376). We encounter issues with our conception of ourselves when we leave that reproductive age. “Middle-aged women…lose their reproductive potential; they go against the grain and in doing so are no longer truly female” (Ibid. 377). Even photographs of elderly women begin to look less female than the emphasized gender differences of youth.The following video is an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, a medical drama on ABC that deals with many of the themes in modern western society that we have discussed this quarter. (I am surprised that references to this show have not been made before.) While the entire show is itself an interesting commentary on the American preoccupation with medicine (and sex), there are several segments of this particular episode, Let it Be, that speak directly to the concept of menopause. The doctors on the show are confronted with a woman who tested positively for the gene that indicates she may get ovarian cancer. Her dramatic response is to have her ovaries, uterus, and breasts removed, and replaced however successfully by prosthetics and hormone therapy in order to eliminate her chances of ever getting this type of cancer.
The first clip I will discuss is from times 23:13 to 24:28. The second clip is from 25:37 to 26:45. (I was unable to successfully divide up this video into clips, and was forced to post the whole episode).
In the first clip, the patient reveals that she is afraid that she will lose the power to turn heads, or even physically attract her husband, as she goes through premature menopause after surgery. She clearly understands the physical ramifications of removing her sex organs, and yet values her life over her gender, sexuality, and youth (and her normalcy, by Lock’s North American definition). While the patient does not take enough issue with this to consider fighting the cancer when and if it appears, her doctor does, and expresses herself in the second clip. The female doctor cannot imagine removing the pieces of her body that make up her identity as a woman. She compares it with male castration at the threat of testicular cancer, which it seems unlikely any man would carry out. While women going through menopause naturally are not literally removing pieces of their organs by choice, I believe American culture’s reaction to the process of menopause not very different than if she were. Our culture is unwilling to give the menopausal woman the time and understanding that she needs to reinvent herself without the part of her that once made her viable as a woman to society. Unlike male aging processes, female menopause is not a gradual process, but a defined event causing an upheaval in the lives of women as the consciously or subconsciously realize that they are no longer 'normal'.
The differences in the perception of ‘menopause’ between Japanese and American cultures is illustrated in great detail in Margaret Lock’s Encounters with Aging, and she discusses potential reasons for the disparity in her chapter on The Politics of Aging. She states that the Japanese idea of normal is more complex than North America’s definition, discussed above. “A Japanese usually specifies normal for whom, normal for what, relying less on a black-and-white dichotomy between pathology and normality and tending to place what is normal on a continuum re-created through time” (Ibid. 379). This malleable definition of what is normal is perhaps the reason why Japanese women experience their menopausal period in life differently than westerners. The procedures of aging are not abnormal for a woman of a certain age. There is no physical upheaval as her place in life and society is not called into question. Lock states that “it is not konenki that is abnormal; it is neither a disease nor an endocrine deficiency” (Ibid. 379).
With these thoughts in mind, the goals of American advertisements for anti-aging products become clear. Unlike the Japanese, who are expected to stay in control of konenki only so that they can support their family structure, Americans desire to
remain youthful and normal for as long as possible. Effective marketing schemes idealize “the woman eternally young, forever feminine, and sexy, with reproductive capacity artificially prolonged so that she is no longer an anomaly but remains forever normal” (Ibid. 378). It is not all right to experience aging, despite the fact that everyone who does not die young will grow old. Why do Americans experience hot flashes more typically than Japanese women? Perhaps their bodies are expressing the unconscious embarrassment. Maybe we “blush” because we are ashamed when the cessation of menstruation confirms the idea that we are no longer feminine, no longer young, and no longer normal.Works Cited
Grey's Anatomy. 13 November 2005. Season 2 Episode 8 "Let it Be".
Margaret Lock, The Making of Menopause AND Epilogue - The Politics of Aging - Flashes of Immortality. IN Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Pp. 303-329 AND Pp. 370-387.
Images:
http://pro.corbis.com/images/SW001076.jpg?size=67&uid=18E31C6A-EB8A-4D19-9D6F-12B968FECE23
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/79/232401868_11b958e9ab.jpg?v=0
http://www.comunidadebeatitudes.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/anti_aging.jpg
http://www.ri.cmu.edu/images/projects/hotflash.jpg
http://www.beautyfit-shop.com/images/jb_revitol-anti-aging-ad_386x207.jpg
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