There are certain changes that happen so gradually you don’t notice them happening.
Then one day you catch sight of yourself in particularly unforgiving bathroom lighting and think:
Hang on.
Not necessarily in a bad way.
Just…
When did that happen?
When did my skin become drier?
When did my hair change?
And why, after spending years carefully removing various hairs from my body, have some of them apparently decided to relocate to my chin?
Nobody authorised this.
I don’t remember completing a change-of-address form.
And yet there it is.
One determined little hair appearing approximately seventeen minutes after I last checked.
I swear they grow faster when you’re not looking.
The changing mirror
I want to be careful with this chapter.
Because women have spent enough of our lives being told that ageing is something we’re supposed to fight.
Anti-ageing creams.
Anti-wrinkle treatments.
Age-defying this.
Youth-restoring that.
As though ageing is some terrible personal failure that could have been prevented if only we’d remembered to apply the correct serum every evening.
I’m not interested in that.
I don’t want to spend the next part of my life at war with my own face.
But I do want to understand what’s happening to it.
Those are different things.
Because some of the changes I’d noticed around menopause weren’t simply about getting older.
Hormonal changes can affect skin and hair too, and the NHS includes dry or itchy skin and hair thinning or hair loss among possible symptoms of perimenopause and menopause.
Of course it does.
At this point I was surprised menopause hadn’t claimed responsibility for potholes and delayed trains.
My skin apparently wants more attention now
I’d never given my skin an enormous amount of thought.
Wash it.
Moisturise it.
Try not to burn it.
Job done.
Then it started feeling different.
Drier.
Less forgiving.
Things I’d previously used without thinking could suddenly feel irritating.
And once again, I went looking for answers.
What I found was reassuringly unexciting.
I didn’t necessarily need seventeen products.
I didn’t need a twelve-step skincare routine.
And I certainly didn’t need to spend £140 on a tiny pot containing something harvested under a full moon.
Basic skincare is still basic skincare.
Cleanse gently.
Moisturise if your skin is dry.
Protect your skin from excessive sun exposure.
Pay attention if something changes significantly or doesn’t settle.
There are, of course, hundreds of products promising to improve the appearance of ageing skin.
And some ingredients have considerably better evidence than others.
But I found myself returning to the same principle I’d used with supplements.
What am I actually trying to achieve?
Comfortable, healthy skin?
Good.
Trying to make myself look twenty-five again?
That’s going to be awkward.
I don’t have her lifestyle anymore.
Or her knees.
And frankly, she didn’t know nearly as much as I do.
Collagen returns
Naturally, collagen wandered back into the conversation.
It had already appeared because of my knees.
Now it was turning up everywhere in relation to skin.
Collagen is an important structural protein in the skin, and changes in skin structure and collagen occur as we age.
Which inevitably leads to the next question:
If collagen in the skin changes, does eating collagen help?
Welcome back to the rabbit hole.
There have been studies of oral collagen supplements and skin outcomes such as hydration and elasticity, and some have reported improvements.
But research in this area isn’t a licence to believe every claim printed on every collagen tub.
Products differ.
Doses differ.
Studies differ.
And supplements exist within an enormous beauty industry that is very good at selling hope in attractive packaging.
So I’ve kept collagen in my familiar category:
Interesting. Not magic.
And because I’d already had my own positive experience with a collagen product and my knees, I was probably more interested than I otherwise would have been.
That’s human nature.
We notice things that fit our experience.
Which is another reason I keep checking the evidence.
And what about hyaluronic acid?
My old friend hyaluronic acid appeared again too.
First joints.
Now skin.
It turns out hyaluronic acid is naturally present in skin and has an important relationship with water and hydration.
Hence all those skincare products.
There has also been research into oral hyaluronic acid and skin hydration.
Again:
Interesting.
Not magic.
I was beginning to think I should have this printed on a T-shirt.
Because one of the easiest traps to fall into with skin is assuming that if something is biologically involved in healthy skin, taking more of it must automatically produce younger-looking skin.
Bodies are considerably more complicated than that.
Very inconsiderate of them.
My hair hadn’t read the script either
Then there was hair.
Hair thinning and hair loss can occur around menopause.
But—and by now you’ll probably know what’s coming—
menopause isn’t the only possible cause.
Hair loss can have lots of explanations, including genetics, stress, illness, nutritional issues, certain medications and other medical conditions.
So if my hair suddenly started falling out dramatically, developed bald patches or changed in a way that worried me, I wouldn’t simply shrug and say:
Hormones.
I’d get it checked.
That’s becoming one of the biggest lessons in this entire book.
Understanding menopause should make us more informed about our health.
Not less curious.
Knowing something can be caused by menopause doesn’t mean we automatically assume it is.
The mysterious migration of body hair
Then there’s the frankly ridiculous issue of hair redistribution.
Some hair seems less enthusiastic about growing where I’d quite like it.
Meanwhile, one determined hair on my chin has apparently been given access to performance-enhancing fertiliser.
How?
Why?
I remove it.
It returns.
I remove it again.
It returns with friends.
Apparently, facial and body hair patterns can change with age, and increased facial hair becomes more common after menopause.
Fine.
I’ve accepted many things.
But I reserve the right to take this one personally.
The annoying thing is that the chin hair always seems to reveal itself somewhere with exceptionally good lighting.
Usually the car.
You can spend half an hour getting ready at home, leave the house perfectly content, flip down the car mirror and discover something that appears to have been growing undetected since 1984.
How?
HOW?
Tweezers have therefore become an essential component of midlife emergency equipment.
Keys.
Phone.
Wallet.
Tweezers.
We’re adapting.
My eyes wanted a mention too
Then my eyes joined in.
Dry eyes become more common with age, and they’re also reported by women around menopause, although—as ever—there are plenty of other possible causes too.
Dry eyes can feel gritty, sore, itchy or watery, and things such as screen use, contact lenses, dry environments, certain medicines and some health conditions can contribute.
This interested me because it’s another symptom that’s easy to treat as completely separate.
Skin dry?
Buy moisturiser.
Eyes dry?
Buy eye drops.
Vagina dry?
We’ll get to that.
Suddenly the word dry seemed to be staging a hostile takeover of midlife.
I began to feel my body needed watering.
The beauty industry knows we’re worried
The more I noticed these changes, the more I noticed something else.
Advertising.
Once you’re a woman in midlife, apparently everybody would like to sell you your younger face back.
Firm.
Lift.
Tighten.
Restore.
Reverse.
Erase.
Correct.
There was a lot of correcting.
I started wondering exactly what I’d done wrong.
A line beside my eye isn’t a spelling mistake.
It doesn’t need correcting.
That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy skincare.
I do.
It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with colouring your hair, having treatments, wearing make-up, using serums or doing absolutely anything else that makes you feel good.
Equally, there’s nothing wrong with doing none of it.
The bit I object to is the suggestion that we’re required to disguise the fact that we’ve lived.
I have lived.
Quite a lot, actually.
That’s why I’m in midlife.
Success!
I don’t want my twenty-year-old face back
This was surprisingly similar to the revelation I’d had about my body.
I didn’t want my old body back.
I wanted to look after the one I have.
Eventually I realised I felt the same way about my face.
I don’t need to look twenty.
I was twenty once.
It was fine.
I had more collagen and considerably less sense.
I’ve earned some of what I see now.
Laugh lines?
I’ve laughed.
Good.
Changes around my eyes?
They’ve spent decades looking at people I love.
Good.
A face that looks older than it did twenty years ago?
Well…
It is older than it was twenty years ago.
Mystery solved.
That doesn’t mean every change delights me.
I’m human.
There are days when I look in the mirror and think:
Oh.
There are other days when I think:
Actually, you look all right.
And increasingly there are days when I barely think about it at all.
Those might be the best ones.
Looking well and being well aren’t the same thing
This became another useful distinction.
We use the word healthy very casually in relation to appearance.
Healthy glow.
Healthy hair.
Healthy-looking skin.
But somebody can look fantastic and be unwell.
And somebody can have wrinkles, thinning hair or dry skin and be perfectly healthy.
Appearance gives us information sometimes.
It isn’t a medical report.
That mattered because I didn’t want this book to quietly turn into:
How to make menopause invisible.
Why should it be invisible?
I don’t need to emerge from menopause looking untouched by time.
I want to emerge from it well.
Strong.
Capable.
Interested in life.
Still learning.
Still laughing.
Preferably sleeping.
We’ll come to that.
So what am I actually doing?
Once again, my answer became remarkably ordinary.
I’m trying to eat well rather than chase individual miracle foods.
I’m paying attention to protein and the overall quality of what I eat.
I’m drinking enough.
I’m moving.
I’m protecting my skin from too much sun.
I’m moisturising when my skin needs it.
I’m treating skincare as something enjoyable rather than an emergency attempt to prevent ageing.
And I’m keeping an eye on changes that seem unusual rather than assuming menopause is responsible for everything.
Most importantly, I’m trying to stop inspecting myself as though I’m a before photograph.
There is no before photograph.
This is just me.
Now.
And I’m actually rather fond of her.
Even with the chin hair.
Although the chin hair and I remain in active negotiations.
The mirror isn’t the problem
Perhaps the strangest part of midlife is that internally I don’t feel like an entirely different person.
I’m still me.
Then occasionally I catch my reflection unexpectedly and see someone older than the version of myself that apparently still lives inside my head.
And for a second there’s a disconnect.
Oh. That’s me.
But I’m beginning to think that isn’t something I need to fix.
Maybe my internal picture simply needs updating.
I’m not disappearing.
I’m changing.
There’s a difference.
And the woman in the mirror isn’t a lesser version of the younger one.
She knows more.
She’s survived more.
She’s considerably better at spotting nonsense.
She understands that one glass of wine and a very funny friend require advance knowledge of toilet locations.
She’s rediscovered Hercules.
She’s learnt that expensive packaging isn’t evidence.
And she now carries emergency tweezers.
Frankly, she’s quite well prepared.
There was just one thing she desperately needed.
Sleep.
Because however philosophical I became about ageing, I found it considerably harder to embrace my reflection after spending half the night staring at the ceiling.
And so we return to my old friend.
3 a.m.
Or 3:12.
Or 3:17.
The exact time varied.
The basic message did not.
Hello. You’re awake again.
Wonderful.
Next…
