Celebrities Who Have Gotten Real About Going Through Menopause

Menopause. It’s something all women and people who were assigned female at birth (AFAB) go through eventually, yet this season of life is still shrouded in mystery and shame. Luckily, the stigmas around menopause are dissolving — and that’s in large part because of celebrities and public figures who’ve shared their personal stories.

Mayo Clinic defines menopause as the end of a person’s menstrual cycles. It is typically diagnosed after 12 months without a menstrual period. That transitional phase is called perimenopause. Menopause can occur in your 40s or 50s, but the average age in the United States is 51. It’s associated with a host of uncomfortable symptoms, from hot flashes to vaginal dryness to sleep issues. Some people opt to undergo hormone therapy, or HT, to ease the severity of their symptoms.

It bears repeating: Menopause is something that impacts every person with ovaries. It should not be a taboo topic.

Since it affects women and AFAB people, menopause is historically under-discussed and under-studied. But candid conversations about reproductive health are becoming more commonplace, leading a growing number of women to speak out about their menopause journeys and advocate for better care for people going through it.

Menopause does indicate the end of a person’s reproductive years, but it says nothing about their spark or vitality. Below, read up on sage advice, sharp insight, and personal anecdotes from six celebrities who’ve experienced menopause firsthand.

Beverly Johnson

Image Credit: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

The runway model, who broke ground in the 1970s as the first Black woman to cover Vogue magazine, recently opened up about her menopause journey. At 47 years old, Johnson underwent a hysterectomy to combat her recurring uterine fibroids. The procedure sent her into “full blown menopause,” she told People: “The doctor didn’t explain and I thought menopause would come on gradually.”

But that was not the case. “My body changed,” Johnson explained. “You start gaining weight in the middle. And I was still modeling. I felt tired. I remember talking to older women and when they’d break out in a sweat, I’d say ‘What’s wrong? Are you okay?’ And the response was always ‘You’ll know about it soon enough.’ I never connected the two. Well, I was that woman now. You’re in the middle of a conversation with an attractive guy — I was single — and all of a sudden, there’s a mustache of sweat, and he’s saying ‘Are you okay?'”

It impacted her sex life, too: “Mentally, you still have a sex drive but physically, there were changes. You’re moist in all the wrong places and that was a big shocker for me. There are all these unexpected consequences.”

To manage these symptoms, Johnson has prioritized healthy eating, pelvic floor exercises, and hormone therapy. “I got more helpful information from girlfriends than my own doctors,” she admitted. “As soon as you mention it to someone going through it, it’s the topic of conversation.”
Michelle Obama

Image Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Albie Awards

In a podcast episode from 2020, the former First Lady got candid about taking hormone therapy to manage her severe hot flashes from menopause.

She even recalled a particularly brutal hot flash she endured while on the presidential helicopter with her husband, Barack Obama: “I’m dressed, I need to get out, walk into an event, and, literally, it was like somebody put a furnace in my core and turned it on high. Then, everything started melting and I thought, ‘Well this is crazy, I can’t do this!’”

“What a woman’s body is taking her through is important information,” she continued. “It’s an important thing to take up space in a society, because half of us are going through this but we’re living like it’s not happening.”
Oprah Winfrey

Image Credit: on Kopaloff/Getty Images

In a 2019 magazine column, the journalist and media mogul wrote eloquently about reframing the conversation around menopause.

“So many women I’ve talked to see menopause as a blessing,” she shared. “I’ve discovered that this is your moment to reinvent yourself after years of focusing on the needs of everyone else.”

Winfrey, 68, also encouraged women to speak with their doctors about managing and understanding their menopause symptoms. For instance, she experienced heart palpitations during perimenopause, which she mistakenly thought was an indication of heart disease.
Naomi Watts

Image Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Watts, 54, wants us all to be able to laugh about the hard stuff — including menopause.

“I went into perimenopause earlier than my peers and there wasn’t a ton of conversation going on about menopause at the time,” the British actress told SheKnows in September. “My own personal experience echoed what I went through with fertility, which I found to be very lonely and shameful, the notion of not being able to bare children was making me feel ‘less than.’ I knew if I was feeling this way that there were likely others feeling this way, and that society’s perspective needs to change.”

That’s why she decided to partner with a greeting card company to create a series of menopause-themed cards. “We’re taking a step to empower women during their menopausal transition,” she explained. “Humor is a big way to access uncomfortable conversations and wherever there’s pain, there’s a need to defuse it.. and yes, if we can’t laugh, we’ll just cry and god knows we’ve done enough crying by now.”
Cheryl Hines

Image Credit: Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images

Like Watts, Hines, 57, has used her platform to normalize talking about menopause. In 2018, the Curb Your Enthusiasm actress partnered with the pharmacuetical company AMAG to spread awareness about vulvar and vaginal atrophy, two common symptoms of menopause that can cause pain during sex.

“Before puberty and childbirth, [women] are prepared by our family members and healthcare providers about what to expect, but that isn’t the case with menopause,” Hines said at the time. “Painful sex due to menopause is often considered a taboo topic and I want to change that.”
Tracee Ellis Ross

Image Credit: Amy Sussman/Getty Images

In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar last October, the Black-ish actress shared a refreshingly positive take on her experience going through perimenopause, the precursor to menopause.

“It’s really frying my brain,” Ross, 50, told the magazine. “It is really bizarre, but it is the most glorious invitation into a new season and chapter in my life. There’s no information about it. There’s shame talking about it.” To that effect, she hopes sharing her story will encourage other women to do the same.

She also shared some wisdom from her friend Michaela Angela Davis: “[She] told me, ‘This is an invitation into your wild-woman phase, to being a moon driver. You have spent years being driven by the moon, and now you are going to drive the moon.’ And I was like, ‘That’s right. I’m about to drive the moon.'”