Nicky Riding

NICKY RIDING

A critical analysis of the representation of post-menopausal women in Western contemporary art and culture

May 2025

DOI 10.20933/100001379

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Critical Analysis of the Representation of Post-Menopausal Women in Western Contemporary Art and Culture

Nicky has provided an extract from the Research Report (2023) that informed her Dissertation which is titled, ‘TheIntersectionofGender,AgeandMenopause:AnAnalysisofitsRepresentationin WesternArtandCulture’. At this stage Nicky is not publishing her Dissertation as she is exploring options to include it in a book that she hopes to publish when she undertakes her Master of Research.

Abstract

At the outset of the Research Report, titled ACriticalAnalysisoftheRepresentationofPostmenopausalWomeninWesternContemporaryArtandCulture, I presented a hypothesis, that the interconnected factors of Social Construct, Misogyny, Ageism, Gender bias and Body Politics all play their part in determining that level of representation. The aim of my research was to test this belief.

For the purposes of the Report the focus was on women in the age range of 50 to 65 who were post-menopausal. The US website Healthline states that an estimated 40% of women ages 60 to 65 still get hot flushes (a symptom of Menopause) (Watson, 2023). This research is important because of the scale of the population it impacts. There are 13 million people who are currently menopausal in the UK (NHS-England, 2022). Life expectancy for women is slowly increasing and physicians in the US have indicated that American women will spend 40% of their lives in a postmenopause phase (Harrington, 2018). There are two levels of reality to this menopausal period, the physical changes that occur and how that event occurs within a socio-cultural context (Kaufert, 1982). But as Jackson states ‘Menopause is a natural cycle of life that’s also a highly charged social construction…dogged by taboos, shame, lack of education and misinformation’ (Jackson, 2019). To interpret representation in arts and culture one must firstly understand medical representation in the Western world and how it impacts and influences more general attitudes to the menopause (Jackson, 2019).

Excerpt

Whilst second wave feminism was taking hold, two books were published that greatly impacted the narrative about being post-menopausal. The first was ‘Everything You Always Wanted to Want to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)’ by Dr David Reuben which had ‘a profound effect on sex education and hailed as integral part of the sex revolution’ (Jackson, 2019). It denigrated the impact of menopause with quotes such as, ‘Having outlived their ovaries, they may have outlived their usefulness as human beings The remaining years may be just marking time until they follow their glands into oblivion’ (Jackson, 2019). The second book was by Dr Robert Wilson ‘who was instrumental in constructing menopause as a disease that could be cured by doctors and drugs’ (Jackson, 2019). He had the infamous line that, ‘all Post Menopause Women (PMW) are castrates’ but if you took Hormone Replacement Therapy you would be, ‘feminine forever’ (Jackson, 2019). Even today the World Health Organization (Martin, 2020) maintains that menopause is a disease.

Language is important here, if we accept that menopause is a disease then we accept something is wrong, meaning it’s not normal (Jackson, 2019) Menopause is normal, (Blackie, 2022) many women choose to follow a natural route through their menopause, it is not a disease but a natural part of being a woman (Blackie, 2022). However, most women will at some time experience symptoms ‘but the dread is in part socially constructed’ (Jackson, 2019). Jackson goes on to say that there are three myths that standout: ‘her sex life is over’, she gains weight and ‘she’ll turn into a maniac’.

These negative expectations are not just held by midlife women they are held by wider society. There is evidence to suggest that attitudes are changing, ‘with [the] courageous and successful vanguards of fifth wave feminism’ (Frostrup, 2023). With all subjects that are regarded as taboo, changing minds and attitudes is hard (Jackson, 2019), and it takes time. There is an increasing cadre of high-profile women: Renata Jazdzyk (Murphy, 2023), Pamela Anderson (Aitkenhead, 2023); Carole Vordeman (Topping, 2023) Davina McCall (McCall, 2023); that have started talking about their experiences however the actual visual ‘representations of older women or of menopause remain rare in Western Culture’ (Jackson, 2019).

A search of academic papers on Google Scholar supports Jackson’s view. Using the keywords: Representation, Menopausal, Postmenopausal, Menopause, Feminist, Contemporary Art, Culture and Media, produced approximately 450 references. There were only fifteen relevant papers, the rest were mainly medically related. Only two academic art practice research papers were directly relevant. One for a Masters, The Golden Years: Re-imaging Postmenopausal Women-hood (Miller, 2018). The other a PhD, Age Becomes Her: Redefining the Possibilities of Ageing for Women (Through Scarred Aged Skin and the Material Body) (Zyborska, 2021). One medical paper did help with understanding a wider context to the ‘History of The Menopause’ (Baron, 2013). This gives the writer an opportunity to make an original contribution to knowledge that will fill a requisite gap.

Aspects of my own artistic practice have more recently drawn on the Menopause and the challenges faced by women in midlife. I believe that the stories of postmenopausal women are often left untold. Through my art practice I have taken an uncompromising autobiographical look at what it looks and feels like to be a 58-year-old PMW (see both sets of artworks shown below). However, I must be cognizant of the objectivity that needs to be applied when writing this paper and consider the culture in which I live, how it develops and try to express views without bias (Douglas, 1985).

1 me-no-pause,

Figure

2023. Nicky Riding

Figure 2 me-no-pause, 2023. Nicky Riding

Figure 3 me-no-pause. There Never was an Apple, 2023 Nicky Riding

Figure 4 Parlez Vous

me-no-pause? Nicky Riding, 2023

Figure 5: Keeping the Show on the Road. [Over] Forty. Female. Fat. An Autobiographical take on a year in the life of Nicky Riding. Mixed Media, 2023.

It is helpful to apply a theoretical model to further report findings. In the 1980’s, B Greenberg developed a model that was initially used to trace the infiltration of minority groups into mainstream US television, it was further refined in 2012 by Lemish & Muhlbauer (Lemish & Muhlbauer, 2012). Three of Greenberg’s headings are relevant to the structure of my findings. They are Invisibility, Stereotypisation, and Integration all of which help navigate why the representation of PMW in art and culture is so narrow.

To explore invisibility, we start with the view of Victoria Smith, ‘the cliché of middle-aged women-hood is that it’s a time when we ‘become invisible’…this does not happen. We are still here, same as always; it’s just that we’re being ignored. Other people are actively choosing not to acknowledge or value us’ (Smith, 2023). PMW as we have seen are not fertile, thus their value to society as child bearers is lost (Lemish & Muhlbauer, 2012). As women mature there is a view that they diverge from the ‘hegemonic sexy body by which all women are measured’ (Lemish & Muhlbauer, 2012). There are two limiting roles by which femininity is defined and measured –fertility and sexuality (Lemish & Muhlbauer, 2012). Smith elaborates on this ‘the one F all middleaged women retain – femaleness – pales into insignificance with the loss of the F’s that matter most to patriarchy: fertility, femininity, fuckability’ (Smith, 2023).

Gender, the ability to reproduce and age of women are connected, in that genuine disadvantages come in one neatly wrapped package for PMW. Intersectionality where, ‘all oppression is linked’ Taylor goes someway to explain this. ‘The interconnected nature of social categorisations such as race, class, and gender, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of disadvantage’ (Taylor, 2019). I previously argued that ‘sexual orientation, physical ability, disability and age’ (Riding, 2022) could be added. ‘In our mass-mediated society, age, and gender structure each other in a complex set of reverberating feedback loops, conspiring to render the older female body paradoxically both hyper-visible and invisible …. the wish of our visual culture is to erase the female body from view’ (Woodward, 2006).

There is also evidence to support the ‘invisibility of older women in academic feminism’ (Meagher, 2014). With several theorists stating that, ‘the matter of age has not been integrated into feminist scholarship and that the field of women’s studies has ignored old women’s issues’ (Meagher, 2014). Much of earlier feminist activism focused on the experiences of the young women e.g., equality in the workplace and reproductive rights (Meagher, 2014).

The fate of the PMW is also ‘invisible’ in some other texts, take the book, ‘A Brief History of Misogyny’ (Holland, 2018) which has no mention of the plight of older women/menopause. Also, in ‘Women Can’t Paint’ (Gørrill, 2020) clear quantitative data supports ageism in the art world. Gørrill asks a question, ‘Why do female artists appear to become invisible as they age? And why women become invisible after 50?’ (Gørrill, 2020). There is discussion about the impact of motherhood but not about the impact of Menopause. The following statement is by no means scientific and will be further researched. What happens between the age of 39, (the average age of validation of female artists) and a more mature artist winning a prize at the age of 62? (Gørrill, 2020). The answer is Menopause.

Griselda Pollock, art historian has also described ‘the invisibility of old or aging women in Western Art as a ‘radical lack in our repertoire of cultural representation’ and for those that do exist they are there to terrify (Meagher, 2014). This is evidenced by Kathleen Woodward, ‘In academic and artistic circles, the body has been the focus of attention for many years, but the older female body has been significant only in terms of its absence.’ She quotes two major collections of art [represented in books] where there is only one older body represented (Woodward, 2006).

Stereotypisation, represents the ‘dominant cultural stereotypes that are naturalized and accepted as “truths” (Lemish & Muhlbauer, 2012). But as Barthes (1973) argues can’t these representations be treated as myths, ‘a system of values presented as if they were a system of facts?’ (Kaufert, 1982). These myths have been built and socialised over centuries which could be easily changed or destroyed (Macat, n.d.) but as we have seen earlier, in the case of the PMW these tropes have remained firmly ensconced.

Since the witch hunts in the 15th century (History.com-Editors, 2020) older women have been considered both ‘repugnant to look at and dangerous’ (Chollet, 2022). In ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ (1484), an inquisitor’s manual for prosecution of Witches, there was a ‘morbid interest in the witch as the ‘other’ … the weaker but dangerous complement of man’ Creed, 1993). A Witch Picker of old would carry out a meticulous search for the Devil’s mark on the surface of the body. Any birthmark, scar of irregularity could serve of proof of a witch (Chollet, 2022).

Fast forward to 2023 and replace the word ‘Picker’ with ‘Internet Troll’ typically dishing out a healthy dose of vitriolic misogyny aimed at the PMW. Just ask Hilary Clinton, Madonna and Mary Beard, (McCormack, 2012), (Mead, 2014) & (Wet, 2023) about their experiences. Is as much attention given to Paul McCartney’s age and appearance as that of Madonna? (Martin, 2020). Whether a woman decides to embrace her post-menopausal years naturally or with cosmetic help, it appears she can’t win – it is a strange type of modern media witch-hunt (Turner, 2023), (Martin, 2020).

Other stereotypes in our culture that embed these prejudices can be found in ‘Growing Old in Early Modern Europe’ (Campbell, 2017) through to the representation of 50+ women in film [Sunset Boulevard, ‘the exemplar Hollywood text for stories about women aging’ (Harrington, 2018)]. To current term ‘Karen’, ‘an epithet coined to describe racists, white women, which now means any older woman who won’t pipe down’ (Turner, 2023). The bitch-witch older woman [The wicked stepmother in (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937), Cruella De Vil in (101 Dalmatians, 1996)]; the plain uneducated but good housewife (Serial Mom, 1994) and the controlling mother e.g., Ray’s mother in ‘Everyone Loves Raymond’ (Lemish & Muhlbauer, 2012). This represents just the tip of the post-menopausal cultural, iceberg.1 These stereotypes continue in advertising where, ‘the language… misrepresents, or even worse, just ignores older women’ (Martin, 2020).

As Faull states, ‘ads reflect society and culture and right now, ours is still obsessed with ‘youth’2 and the idea that women should avoid aging at all costs…Women especially are being misrepresented’ (Faull, 2021).

Our final category is Integration As society becomes more responsive to social progression, equality, and human rights (Lemish & Muhlbauer, 2012) there is evidence to suggest that progress is being made with representation. This is demonstrated by the growing presence of older women in business, media related professions, the arts (Frostrup, 2023). A recent art history text that represents solely women is an attempt to re-dress the balance (Hessel, 2022). One, could call all these efforts ‘embedded feminism’ (Lemish & Muhlbauer, 2012). I would rather call it embedding feminism as we still have a way to go.

There are aspects of ‘a woman’s normative reproductive life’ (Harrington, 2018) that are well represented. Menstruation is sometimes called ‘Menstrala’, a term coined by the artist Vanessa Tiegs (Hughes & Standing, 2018), (Jackson, 2019)]. ‘Menstrala’ started with Judy Chicago and Red Flag (1971) (Chicago, 1982) and progressed to Rupi Kaur (Holden, 2015). Motherhood is covered extensively through art history (Brooks, 2016), (Meagher, 2014). And in contemporary art the subject of Birth is curated with ‘The Birth Rites Collection’ (Knowles, 2023). Where does one find the corresponding cannon of (post) menopausal art?