The Daily Telegraph Wednesday 7 August 2019 *** 23
llison �earson
Menopause is rotten
but it makes way for
a great second act
n Oscar Wilde’s novel
The Picture of Dorian
Gray, the hero sells
his soul when he opts
to retain his youthful
beauty, while his portrait
in the attic suffers all the wear and
tear of existence. Let’s try to imagine a
21st-century Dora Gray.
Scientists have come up with a
fiendishly clever new procedure
whereby a sliver of Dora’s ovaries is
put on ice before she turns 40. As she
approaches menopause, about 10 years
later, that piece of ovary is implanted
back into her womb and releases all the
hormones that will keep her young and
maybe enable her to have children far
later than any mother in history.
Dora’s reproductive window might
stay open for 60 years. Theoretically,
she could stave off menopause until
she is old enough to be a great-
grandmother, although no one
remembers those, because they have
been eliminated by the miraculous
new procedure. By 2040, even
grandmothers are on the endangered
list. When a woman doesn’t need to
start a family till her late 40s or 50s and
remains fertile till she’s at least 70, her
children are unlikely to have kids till
after her death.
Why wouldn’t Dora and her female
contemporaries take advantage of
this age-defying treatment? Hell, who
wants to be an old bag with hot flushes,
brittle bones, a thickening waist and
mood swings when you can reset
your biological clock for your own
convenience? What could it possibly
cost Dora? Except six decades of
Tampax Super and PMT without end?
This is not science fiction, it’s science
fact. Thanks to a breakthrough by
the fertility expert who pioneered
IVF, women will now be able to delay
menopause for up to 20 years. Nine
British women have already undergone
the procedure, offered by a company
called ProFam (Protecting Fertility and
Menopause). One of the founders, Prof
Simon Fishel, says: “It’s quite likely
that many will be in the menopause for
longer than their fertile period. We are
empowering women to take control of
their own health by naturally delaying
their menopause.”
Hmmm. That’s a pretty strange use
of the word “naturally”, isn’t it? I bet
Mother Nature did not foresee females
spending up to £7,000 for the removal
and storage of ovarian tissue, followed
by £4,000 for a regraft in order to trick
their bodies into believing they are
much younger than they are.
The breakthrough is clearly a
godsend to those who suffer early
menopause or women who havehysterectomies and are plunged,
overnight, into the maelstrom of the
change. But what about everyone else?
Dr Frankenstein – oops, sorry, Dr
Fishel – is gung-ho about the marvels
of his discovery, but seems to have
given very little thought to the wider
implications. He insists that it’s all
about putting off the unpleasant
side effects of menopause, not about
allowing women to have babies much
later. Why put Protecting Fertility
in the name of your company, then?
Plus, if you grant women indefinite
fecundity, how are you going to
prevent a flood of geriatric mothers?
Alarm bells start clanging louder
than a 35-year-old’s biological clock
when Dr Fishel says his procedure
allows women “to nail their career”,
so they can stop worrying about
starting a family because, “if, by 40,they still want a baby but are not able
to naturally, they can go back to their
tissue which they froze at 30”.
Call me cynical, but I can’t help
noticing that all of the “breakthroughs”
that enable female biology to fit in with
a workplace that was largely designed
by men for the benefit of men involve
long-term experiments on women’s
bodies. How about the workplace
changing radically to enable women to
have the confidence to break off (and
resume) their careers and have babies
when nature intended? Well, obviously
that’s not going to happen. Why not?
Because it’s inconvenient for business.
If you mess with Mother Nature,
though, there may be consequences.
Figures released last week showed that
the birth rate in England and Wales has
hit its lowest since records began. The
only age group defying that trend was
mums over 40. Why are more women
starting a family at the least safe age for
them and their baby? It’s madness.
Except it makes a kind of warped
sense when you realise that a record
72 per cent of working-age women are
now in employment and, increasingly,
those women feel they have to
postpone childbirth until they “nail
their career”. They may discover that
they have trouble getting pregnant and
end up turning to IVF, at huge cost both
financially and emotionally. Then there
are the one in four female graduatesRead more
telegraph.co.uk/
opinion
Email
Allison.Pearson@
telegraph.co.uk
Twitter
@AllisonPearsonI
N
on-Muslim girls in
Lincolnshire will soon
be asked to wear a hijab
for a day, to “raise awareness
of discrimination”. Ghada
Mohamed of the Lincoln
Muslim Sisters Forum says
she came up with the idea
in response to a number of
incidents where girls wearing
headscarves were subjected
to abuse. Mrs Mohamed
hopes secondary schools
across the country will sign
up and it will lead to “better
understanding”.
I suppose the idea of Muslim
girls removing their hijabs
for a day to get a “better
understanding” of how
the majority of their fellow
countrywomen live is out of
the question? Or even asking
Muslim boys to wear the hijab
so they can experience what it’s
like to always go around with
your head covered and wonderhow nice that actually is for
girls? No, I thought not.
The Lincolnshire story is
further complicated by the
fact that many young Muslim
women are themselves engaged
in a bitter battle to leave their
heads uncovered. On Twitter,
17-year-old Soutiam Goodarzi
commented: “Some women
are forced into prisons, raped,
beaten and worse for ditching
the hijab... I was forced into the
hijab when I was six. To then
see the country which granted
me freedom engage in this,
specially after three women
were sentenced to prison in
Iran, is heartbreaking.”
I totally agree with Soutiam.
Why is our liberal democracy
conspiring with cultural
practices that so many women
are grateful to escape?
This week, Denmark took a
stand and banned the full-
face veil in public, arrestinga woman when she refused
to remove her burka. While
the Danes and the Dutch are
valiantly defending Western
values, all liberals in the UK
can do is squeal that Boris’s
light-hearted “letterbox”
remark about the hideous,
dehumanising burka was
racist. Pathetic.
Watching Stacey Dooley’s
report for Panorama from
the Al-Hawl refugee camp in
Syria, it was horrifying to see
thousands of foreign Isil brides
wearing black shrouds, like a
flock of malevolent crows. Even
little girls, Stacey was told, are
beaten if they don’t wear the
niqab. (Unbelievably, I’ve seen
girls dressed like that in Islamic
school playgrounds in the
north of England.)
Dooley has been mocked
for being a lightweight, a
mere “shopgirl”, but I thought
she did far better than more
experienced male reporters in
the same situation. Refusing
to swallow assurances that
the women had only done
cooking and cleaning, angrily
she assailed them with
evidence about the cruel
female “morality police”.
When one indignant black
shroud demanded, “Is anyone
asking ‘Do you deserve to live
in Europe?’”, Stacey replied
coldly: “I didn’t turn my back
on democracy ... Is it OK to
slaughter civilians, cut off
the heads of charity workers?
People like me should be
slaughtered?”
I felt so proud of that fiery,
tenacious English girl, sticking
up for what she knew was
right and good in that hellish
place, even arguing that the
unremorseful were entitled to a
fair trial.
Instead of hijab day, perhaps
Mrs Mohamed and the Lincoln
Muslim Sisters Forum would
like to encourage schools
to show the Panorama Isil
brides documentary. That
would certainly contribute to
a “better understanding” of
cultural differences.Instead of hijab day,
show Stacey Dooley’s
Panorama to girls
Mother Nature should
be our priority, ‘giving
women control over
their biological clock’
is an almighty con
Not such a lightweight: Stacey Dooley visited Syria for PanoramaPABBCHow can
police who
look like
punks
expect
respect?
I admit to
a sneaking
admiration for
the residents of
Whaley Bridge
in Derbyshire
who are refusing
to leave their
homes. More
admiration
than I have for
Rachel Swann,
the Deputy Chief
Constable of
Derbyshire, who
lectured them
on the risk they
were posing
“to the lives of
responders”.
To be honest, I
didn’t really pay
close attention to
what Ms Swann
was saying. I was
too horrified
by her hair. It’s
hard to believethat a senior
officer thinks it’s
appropriate to
present herself
for duty looking
like a punk with
bottle-blonde
fringe kept
vertical by an
aerosol can of
extreme styling
product.
Rightly, she
attracted a
huge amount
of criticism on
social media.
“Aren’t the
police supposed
to engender
respect, not
ridicule?”
demanded one.
Most mortified
of all were the
former officers.
“In 30 years of
police service,I never saw the
like.
“The police
are a disciplined,
uniformed
service, not
Star Trek. What
message does
she send to
junior officers?”
Apart from
jokes about
Jedward, what
reaction do you
think Ms Swann
provokes?
If Priti Patel,
the Home
Secretary, is
serious about
making the
criminal justice
system fit for
purpose, she
can start by
demanding that
senior officers
look the part.Criticism: Deputy
Chief Constable
Rachel Swann
warning residents
refusing to leave
Whaley Bridge
they are putting
lives at riskHow Hard Can It
Be?, Allison
Pearson’s
novel about
menopause, is
published by
The Borough
Press, £7.99who will never have children, either
through choice or, more probably,
because office politics prevents them.
I’m sorry, but “giving women more
control over their biological clock”
is an almighty con. A country where
women aren’t having children simply
isn’t breeding enough taxpayers of the
future to build a good society. Mother
Nature should be our priority, not
outwitting Father Time.
Cards on the table, folks. I had
a really rotten menopause, until I
found the right combination of daily
oestrogen gel, nightly progesterone
tablets and, for a brief time, a dab of
testosterone on the inner thigh, which
gave me the kind of confidence men
must enjoy their whole lives.
The NHS has a lousy record of
treating women with peri-menopausal
symptoms. A huge percentage are
prescribed antidepressants – but
they’re not depressed, just hormonal.
Once you’ve got the HRT you need
and deserve, which has none of the
risks of surgical ovary grafting, this
midlife period can be among the best
of your life. TV presenter Fern Britton,
aged 62, enthuses in this month’s Good
Housekeeping about “going back to
who we were at the beginning, before
we did all the responsible things we
needed to do. It’s re-powering.”
It certainly is. There is an incredible
freedom, once you’re unchained from
that lunatic monthly cycle. I didn’t
realise quite how bad my PMT was
until my periods were over, although
the scars were etched on Himself ’s
face. But I would never have paid
£10,000 to postpone my menopause,
knowing that I would have to go
through it anyway, when I was 70
or older, with heaven knows what
consequences for my mind and body.
You know, there’s a reason why
humans are the only great ape species
in which women live long past
reproductive age. Grandmothers, it
turns out, were crucial throughout
evolution to childhood survival and to
the wellbeing of the group. They still
are. A world without grandmothers
doesn’t bear thinking about – a world
deprived of so much wisdom, caring
and perspective about what truly
matters. As the American author,
Sandra Tsing Loh, put it in her memoir,
The Madwoman in the Volvo: “The
real wisdom of menopause may be in
questioning how fun or sane this chore
wheel called modern life actually is.”
Dora Gray really should beware of
postponing menopause for the sake
of eternal youth. She may not lose her
soul, but she will miss out on an age
when the period drama is finally over
and a woman gets to be the heroine in
the great second act of her life.РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS