Oprah Opens Up About the Stigma Of Women Getting Older
By People
Oprah Winfrey is opening up about menopause and the stigma associated with women getting older.
The media mogul, 68, sits down alongside Maria Shriver on an episode of Paramount Plus’ The Checkup With Dr. David Agus and discusses the need for normalizing menopause.
In PEOPLE’s exclusive clip, Shriver, 67, explains that women should feel empowered to talk about the natural change that their bodies go through.
“I think just having women re-marketing menopause as not something to fear, not something that makes you crazy,” she says. “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. So think 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.”
“Especially for Black women,” Winfrey adds. “I know we have been known for bearing a lot and being the strong ones and keep moving no matter what.”
Agus then mentioned Winfrey previously going to a doctor for heart palpitations and having a catheter put “through her artery into her heart,” noting that it could’ve caused serious health problems when the palpitations were a symptom of menopause.
“When I went back to [my doctor] and said, ‘You know this was menopause,’ she said, ‘Well, you’re Oprah Winfrey. I wasn’t gonna have you die on me.”
Additionally in the episode, Shriver and Winfrey discuss living in a culture that is centered around anti-aging, and what it means to get older after menopause.
“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. 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,” Winfrey says.
“That you should be fighting it and resisting it with everything that you have, which is kind of ridiculous because in the end, aging is gonna win,” she says.
