How to tame your hormones: menopause rage in media discourse

Orgad, Shani ORCID: 0000-0001-5129-4203, Gilchrist, Kate ORCID: 0000-0003-1316-3493 and Rottenberg, Catherine (2024) How to tame your hormones: menopause rage in media discourse. Feminist Media Studies. ISSN 1468-0777

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Abstract

While feminist scholarship has challenged earlier misogynist discourses around menopause, menopause continues to be associated with women’s rage. Focusing on UK news and advice websites (2018-2024), we ask if and how this association is figured in contemporary cultural representations and what cultural and political work it performs. We situate our examination within three converging contexts: 1) the unleashing of public displays of women’s rage in Anglophone media in the wake of the #MeToo movement; 2) the changing cultural terrain of ageing women and their growing influence in public life; and 3) the rising visibility of the menopause in the UK. We identify four distinct patterns: 1) construction of rage as a natural and biological symptom of the hormonally imbalanced ageing female body; 2) bundling of rage with other symptoms associated with menopause; 3) repudiation of menopausal women’s rage; and 4) positioning of menopausal women as responsible for managing their rage. These patterns render menopausal women’s rage visible while simultaneously disavowing and obscuring its legitimacy as an apt response to gender injustice. The analysis shows how menopausal women’s apt rage over gender and racial injustice is being depoliticized and reduced to hormone-induced behaviour that ageing women are exhorted to self-manage.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Author
Divisions:	Media and Communications
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1990 Broadcasting
Date Deposited:	24 Sep 2024 11:18
Last Modified:	11 Nov 2024 17:04
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/125502

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