Thread by @monaeltahawy

It's Menopause Awareness Month. For those of us going through perimenopause, that would be every single day for quite a number of years.

What do Nefertiti and Bruce Lee have to do with my perimenopause? I explain! feministgiant.com/p/essay-perime… #MenopauseAwarenessMonth

To look honestly at our bodies as we age is to begin to understand what Bruce Lee meant when he said, “Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless — like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup,..Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." #Menopause

Earlier this year, I started posting photographs of myself on social media with the caption “#ThisIs53. It is not my birthday. I want you to see a 53 year old woman.”

I am now 54. I wanted to be seen. Not to be told, as I often have, that I don’t “look my age.” #Menopause

That is not the compliment some people think it is. But to say “Here is a middle aged woman. Look,” at a time when it seems that every time I look away, my body has changed. To be water is to acknowledge the folly of “control.” #MenopauseAwarenessMonth

Who wants to “control” their body? At a time when we enthusiastically vow to become ungovernable in the face of fascism, to believe we can “control” our bodies is not just the height of folly, it is a form of fascism of the self, surely. #MenopauseAwarenessMonth

It is exactly that kind of "control" that I think of when I consider the image of Nefertiti that most of us are familiar with--the bust of her that is a reminder why her name means "The Beautiful One is Here." Did you know that is photoshopped? #Menopause

Researchers discovered a detailed stone carving--a second face--that differs from the external stucco face. The inner or hidden face is more realistic: it shows Nefertiti with wrinkles, creases at the corners of her mouth, less-defined cheekbones and a bump on her nose #Menopause

The royal sculptor Thutmose seems to have “smoothed” those out with the stucco external face. Who ordered those changes to the stone carvings of Nefertiti’s face? Was it Thutmose attempting to control his work of art? #Menopause

Was it Nefertiti’s husband, the pharaoh, trying to control how the world saw his chief wife? Was it Nefertiti herself, perhaps in an attempt to assert a control over her face that Perimenopause went on to teach her was folly? #MenopauseAwarenessMonth

Standing Nefertiti eschews that folly. She is a middle aged woman saying “Look at me, breasts and belly and all.” The statuette is just around the corner from the Bust of Nefertiti in a museum in Berlin. (see my essay for more on the stolen treasures of my people)

I was most likely at the start of that transition known as perimenopause and utterly oblivious to it when I met Nefertiti. Now I feel I’ve caught up with her. feministgiant.com/p/essay-perime… #MenopauseAwarenessMonth

My belly nods at her belly, knowingly; in the way that when you’re the only person of colour in a white space you nod knowingly when you see another person of colour.

What is art if not also the echo of such nods, across millennia, telling us how familiar it is to be human.

And for me, now aware of Perimenopause and the changes it has brought to my body, it is that nod across the millennia that makes Standing Nefertiti, more so than the famous bust, the Beautiful One. #Menopause

Millennia before Bruce Lee, Standing Nefertiti understood that her power came from being like water--that her power was to stand in her body as it was, unconcealed by a stucco facade. #MenopauseAwarenessMonth

And now millennia after Nefertiti, I understand that my power comes from saying “I am a middle aged woman. Look at me, breasts and belly and all.” feministgiant.com/p/essay-perime… #MenopauseAwarenessMonth

Oct. 18 is #Menopause Awareness Day. That is every day for those of us going through this What The Actual Fuck stage in our life!

New essay coming on FEMINIST GIANT.

Subscribe. It's free - no paywall or ads.

If you can pay, it helps keep it free.

feministgiant.com