"It is the nature of the case that life beyond the menopause is as invisible to the women who has yet to struggle through the change as the top of any mountain is invisible from the valley below. Calm and poise do not simply happen to the post-menopausal woman; she has to fight for them. When the fight is over, her altered state might look to a younger woman rather like exhaustion, when in reality it is anything but" (Germaine Greer in The Change: Women, Aging, and the Menopause, 1992: 9).

      Several people have asked me over the course of this project, including most of my informants, why I am interested in studying menopause. I think most people were surprised to find a young woman researching a topic that seemed to affect only a specific type of individual - namely, the menopausal woman. At first, the routine response I delivered to their inquiries had something to do with how the anthropology of menopause was fascinating and how I had been inspired by Martin's cultural analysis of reproduction in The Woman in the Body. Sometimes, when I was trying to be humorous, I would tell people that my mother was going through menopause and that I wanted to understand her. The ways in which my family and I spoke and thought about her made me curious as to how and why the menopausal woman is viewed the way she is in American society. Her experiences also forced me to think about the diverse ways women experience menopause and the importance of culture in these experiences. So, my anthropological inquiry into Western society's construction of menopause began on a personal note - as the daughter of a menopausal woman and as a woman who would one day be affected by the very constructions she would be studying. For the latter reason, I think this study is relevant to all women because it pertains to the construction and control of the female body, the increasing growth of medical hegemony, and the significance of listening to and learning from women. It is only by sharing experiences across age and regardless of race or class, that women can assert the significance of their personal narratives and possibly lead the way to a future of change.