Menopause Lit

Hello!

Last week I published an essay about my former OBGYN, a man with ties to the anti-choice movement named Dr. Mikeal Love. (In its first iteration, my title for this essay was “Goodbye Dr. Love,” but because the internet hates mystery it was published as “After My Abortion, My Next OBGYN Called Women ‘Host Organisms.’”)

Today is the 100th day of my menstrual cycle—a data point I only know because Dr. Love encouraged me to start tracking my cycle years ago. I’m almost to the finish line! All of which is to say, I’ve got gynecology on the brain.

I remember the first time I read a novel with a scene in a gynecologist’s office: it was Still Life by A.S. Byatt, the second novel of the series concerning Frederica Potter and her sister (also known as the “Frederica quartet”). This was in the late ‘90s, when I was around 20 years old, and I was stunned; the mere fact that I was reading about a character in a novel sitting in the waiting room of an OBGYN’s office floored me. I had read Henry Miller’s raunchy prose and Anais Nin’s erotica. I had read plenty of sex scenes, mostly in mediocre novels by men. But aside from Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, I hadn’t read anything that dealt seriously with, or even acknowledged the existence of, a female character’s internal plumbing. At the time I worshipped A.S. Byatt, so her imprimatur meant a lot to me. I thought, “Wow, I guess it’s okay to write about this!”

AYTGIMM (as I refer to it in my journal) was published in 1970. The feminine hygiene equipment that Margaret used was already well out of date by the time my generation started menstruating. And yet, some readers are still hoping the 86-year-old Judy Blume will write a sequel in which Margaret goes through menopause. There is a meme going around. Apparently, people on Redditt have been talking about this. Which just goes to show: it is high time for menopause lit.

I’m thinking, of course, of Miranda July’s latest novel, All Fours. In case you haven’t heard, All Fours is the story of an unnamed female protagonist, a 45-year-old wife and mother, who, like July, is a moderately famous creative person who dabbles successfully