Mediating menopause: Feminism, neoliberalism, and biomedicalisation

Abstract

Menopause is currently a ‘hot’ topic in the UK. This article examines the Channel 4 television documentary Davina McCall: Sex, Myths and the Menopause as a key cultural text in the current UK ‘menopause moment’, demonstrating how the programme both reflects and contributes to the broader trend of menopause's growing visibility and the emerging menopause market. We begin by situating Davina within broader social, cultural and economic processes which provided a conducive context for the show's largely positive reception, and which constitute some of the key forces fuelling menopause's heightened public profile more broadly. We then move to investigate the discourses that Davina draws upon, mobilises and highlights. Our analysis shows how the programme invokes feminist terms, while discussing crucial structural conditions that underpin the continued stigma and shame around menopause. At the same time, we demonstrate that there is a striking disconnect between the structural inequalities that the documentary highlights and its consistent emphasis on individualised and privatised solutions. This disconnect, we argue, provides important insight into the dominant forces currently animating the current menopause moment in the UK. We conclude by underscoring how even the more recent critical renditions of menopause have thus far remained largely curtailed by biomedical and neoliberal logics.