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Even given this post-#MeToo climate, it\u2019s doubtful so many of these films would be made were the culture not rethinking what menopause means and can look like. Menopause, clinically defined as a full year without a menstrual period, and perimenopause, the years of hormonal change preceding it, are in the midst of a makeover, with actresses proudly lending their names and creaseless likenesses to menopause and perimenopause ventures. Naomi Watts<\/a>, who starred in the bonkers 2013 age-gap romance \u201cAdore,\u201d founded Stripes Beauty, a company offering \u201cholistic menopause solutions.\u201d Gwyneth Paltrow\u2019s Goop sells Madame Ovary, a supplement to ease hormonal change. Halle Berry is starting RESPIN<\/a>, an online community focused on menopausal health.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a truism that sex sells. And as these films, shows and corporate enterprises suggest, menopause might be sexy now.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are finally uncoupling women\u2019s sexuality from our fertility years,\u201d said Shira Tarrant, a professor of women\u2019s, gender and sexuality studies.<\/p>\n But as Tarrant acknowledged, that uncoupling is incomplete. And what exactly are those fertile years? Advances in reproductive technology have significantly increased their span. Actresses, Kidman among them, regularly have children after 40.<\/p>\n Beyond the bedroom, these onscreen bodies are mostly opaque. No character in these recent films mentions hormonal change or suffers the ordinary embarrassments of a hot flash or a \u201ccrime scene\u201d period<\/a>. If this new visibility is liberatory, it is also very limited. Are you perhaps a woman who is slim, conventionally attractive, and more often than not white? Congratulations, you can represent your sex life for just a little longer. In these movies, limbs are lithe, faces smooth. The breasts are like military haircuts, high and tight. Thanks to advances in dermatology, cosmetics and surgery, women can be sexy at almost any age. As long as we look 32 forever.<\/p>\n Very occasionally, an imperfect body makes its way onscreen \u2014 Diane Keaton\u2019s fleeting nude scene in the 2003 romantic comedy \u201cSomething\u2019s Gotta Give,\u201d Emma Thompson\u2019s open robe in 2022\u2019s \u201cGood Luck to You, Leo Grande\u201d<\/a> \u2014 but typically attractiveness equates to porelessness. This is the gruesome crux of the 2024 horror comedy \u201cThe Substance,\u201d in which Demi Moore\u2019s former starlet undergoes gooey agonies to retain her youth and beauty, birthing (asexually) a younger, hotter self.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n