I am listening to my brilliant and menopausal acting coach as she goes through another one
of her hot flashes. “For a couple of minutes my brain shuts down. All I can think of is I am
on fire. And I am panicking because I am in the middle of an audition which makes me feel
even hotter…“

And I am thinking of “Ginger Rogers” – the woman who not only did everything Fred Astaire
did backwards and in heels, but also while menstruating, cramping, menopausing. How the
hell did we forget to include all that? How the hell did we agree to compete with men at their
level, on their terms, at their speed? By pretending of course and hiding and lying.
By pretending that periods, and cramping, and hemorrhaging and peri-menopausing and
hot-flashing and menopausing are aberrations to be ignored or sidelined as we go through
the “real” business of – taking care of “business”. By hiding our aches & pains in order to
look desirable, competitive, perfect. By lying to everyone that we can do it all despite our
gender, despite our bleeding/ sagging bodies begging for a reprieve. By lying to ourselves
that we can be just as fast, just as productive, just as equal. We can be men, please pretty
please, just let us in.

We women can be great liars. It’s not surprising, given that our survival often depends on it.
Some of us pop pills to stop the cramping and migraines that come with our periods, in order
to finish the shift on the factory floor or deliver the corporate report on time. Because
having a period-migraine or PMS is not a valid excuse. Others juggle the demands of work &
family with IUD appointments, D&C and endometrial ablation, omega-3 & estrogen
supplements to stem the non-stop bleeding that often accompanies peri-menopause. And
yet others put on fake smiles in the board-room and sit through meetings never breathing a
word about the night sweats, the hot flashes, the bodies & brains on fire. Because God forbid
we paused the meeting for a few minutes while we let the hot flash pass. Will the board stop
and wait for us to recover? Or will it decide that women are a burden, a drag, a liability?
Women need too much time out. Women hold “’productivity” back. A woman’s place is in
the house!

I look around at the NY Subway station – at the women rushing about, multi-tasking, hyper-
achieving, ignoring the cries of their bodies. My eyes mist as I see ALL women as super-women.
Learning to suffer her pain in silence is almost a design feature of being a woman.
We don’t dare complain because we are afraid the grip on our hard-earned seat at the table
is slippery as it is. We are guarded and on-guard because our victories in the world are new &
fragile. We are scared of being pushed back “for our own good”. So, we try to compete in a
male world, shaped by male bodies, on a male idea of time and productivity. We try to survive
in a world shaped by the male gaze, such that even our blockbuster heroines like Wonder
Woman and the new Captain Marvel are masculine in every way except the shape of their
bodies, which is dressed or shall I say, half-dressed, in clothes that fulfill male fantasy. Never once is
their femininity with its messy problems even hinted at. Does Wonder Woman’s large
breasts ever interfere with her arrow-shooting skills – Amazonian women were said to have
cauterized girls’ right breasts to solve that problem, but the movie never mentions it – afraid
the problems of female reality would be too unpalatable to a hyper-masculine society? Does
U.S. Air Force pilot Carol Danvers AKA Captain Marvel or “I am no man” Éowyn in Lord of
the Rings or the time-traveling nurse Claire in Outlander menstruate when she is hanging
out with an army or brigade of men? Forget the women in Game of Thrones; that hyper-masculine
orgy of sex and violence, its heroines are much too larger-than-life to contend
with the mundane problems that come with actually being a woman.

Growing up, I used to love reading stories of adventure whose heroes were invariably men.
On the rare occasion when there was a heroine involved, she was often pre-occupied with
dressing up like a man, pretending to be a man, mingling with men. This often left me un-
satiated as I found myself wondering – what if she had bigger breasts, how would she strap
them down? What does she do when her time arrives each month? Does she have an ever-
lasting supply of pads/ tampons in the middle of the forest? And what about peri-
menopause? Even daring to imagine any of these effervescent ever-youthful heroines to be
older than 40 is a heroic act! But if through some sheer miracle the heroine does live to be over
40, does she ever go through what many of us go through; bleeding straight for 10 – 20 – 30
days, being at our wits end? Never mentioning something doesn’t make it disappear but it
does trivialize it, as if the concerns & pre-occupations of an entire gender can be something
worth easy dismissal. It’s sad how our society loves hyper-sexualizing women’s bodies but
actually never tries to peer beneath what it feels like to be inside one. As a result we dwell in
fantasy and hide the actual nitty-gritty of life, when the real marvel of story-telling, as the
great writer Aaron Sorkin puts it, is in exploring “how does it happen when it really
happens”. I am still waiting for one of these modern day rendering of heroines to lay it out
for us.

Back in real life, I wonder why is it that my doctor has been recommending Colonoscopy
and breast self-exams to me for years but never once mentioned how to prepare my body for
the onslaught of my peri-menopausal years? Why is it only now when I ask my girlfriends
older than me that they share stories of their bodies’ trauma and their struggles juggling the
balls they always juggled but with the added pressure of “the change”? Why is it that the
only solace my doctor had to offer me about the sudden anxiety and struggles that have beset my
life is the statement “Welcome to your 40s” and a wink? Why are such profound changes treated as afterthoughts? Why are such enormous challenges dismissed as mere inconveniences? Where are the women’s circles to initiate and guide? Or for that matter, where are the men’s circles?

Overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all, I am overcome with the feeling that all men are
complicit in the state of affairs (women too of course but mostly not by choice). The best of
men are compassionate to their own wives, and give massages and make tea. It is a great
start but not enough. The needle needs to be moved; it requires having a dialogue with
others, and influencing others. It requires questioning the status quo of maximizing “fake
productivity” that constantly threatens to leave behind the gender whose perceived slowness
stems from being the carrier of “real productivity” – the productivity of life. After all, much
of what makes us different from men and shapes our lives is because nature made us the
bearer of children. And whether we bear those children or not, our bodies tell us where we
are in the circle of life far more acutely than do men’s bodies. Besides, what has this quest
for fake productivity, this insistence on being fast and hyper-competitive delivered us? A
race to the bottom? A devastated planet? A growing disconnect with our fellow beings? Tech-bros?

One could argue nature itself is unfair, it has no interest in the individual well being or
personal achievement or happiness, all it cares for is evolution. So, as far as nature is
concerned the female gender is simply the vehicle for the next generation – her personal
dreams and happiness be damned. But as a society the male gender has long claimed to
care about fulfillment of dreams and the pursuit of happiness. It’s time we as a society
include the happiness of all genders in the conversation. It’s time to slow down not just so
that one gender can take a breath & walk through life with grace, but so all of us can breathe
& walk through life with grace. It’s time to have a conversation about what it really means to
be a woman.

More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com