Oprah Winfrey Says It’s ‘Ridiculous’ to ‘Resist’ Menopause & Aging

We’re entering a golden age of accepting, celebrating and thoroughly loving on our golden years. And Oprah is in on it too! In a conversation with Maria Shriver during an episode of The Checkup on Paramount Plus, Oprah Winfrey talked menopause and how she thoroughly got over the cultural stigmas surrounding it.

We’re no stranger to side-eyeing the youth-obsessed anti-aging culture over here and it was wonderful to see Oprah sharing those feelings.

“The whole culture is set up to tell you that the thing that is most natural — we’re surrounded by these beautiful trees here that literally get better with age,” Winfrey said. “I think we all get better with age — the culture is set up to tell us, in our particular society, that it’s the wrong thing.”

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She went on to note that “fighting” and “resisting” aging, participating in that obsession stayed pretty ridiculous — “because, in the end, aging is gonna win.” (Put that on a T-Shirt, please.)

She also commented on the long-standing stigma around menopause that made women in that stage feel worse about their minds and bodies, particularly the idea that menopause and post-menopausal changes makes a person “crazy.”

And she agrees that pushing back against those narratives is so essential: “I think just having women re-marketing menopause as not something to fear, not something that makes you crazy. There’s that whole thing out there in the zeitgeist [that] women who are in menopause are crazy and then women are crazy in general.”

She also shared how Black women in particular can experience the pressure to quiet down about what they’re going through and stay strong and silent and push through.

“I know we have been known for bearing a lot and being the strong ones and keep moving no matter what,” she said. “… for women to kind of push up against that and therefore the stigma will go away if women feel empowered and feel like there’s not something wrong with them if they talk about these issues they’re going through.”

We can’t agree more! And it certainly doesn’t hurt to have such a powerful voice in the mix prepared to share her own story and set the de-stigmatizing tone — that’s certainly one of the better ways to give people going through menopause the resources, visibility and support they need.

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