PART ONE : CULTURAL FACTORS – why is the menopause viewed as a bad thing (troublesome symptoms aside…) We women certainly get a bum deal when it comes to ageing. Not only are we committing a heinous crime by even making it past 40 in the eyes of the youth-obsessed media, we are also daring to demand that the medical profession pay attention to us and deliver us from the evils of the dreaded menopause. Only a few centuries ago, we were actually pretty lucky to live that long; most women, if they didn’t cop it during childbirth, snuffed it pretty soon after. We had the plague to contend with,…