Cliffhangers Anonymous
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Spinning-out Spreadlanders,
Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s hit pause on the perimenopause mania, shall we? That voice of reason you hear coming from the other side of the chasm is beauty soothsayer
in Allure. Going against the storm of perimenopause horror stories, she recalls her own symptoms as relatively mild, if a bit weird: “an occasional 30-second flash of feeling like I was run over by a truck.” These were bad, but brief, and basta. Val hits upon an idea that has consumed many a Spreaditorial meeting: With a tidal wave of awareness comes a tidal wave of fear/paranoia—and “a lot of marketing to a predictable and growing audience of vulnerable people”—about 36-plus known symptoms that could strike any of us, at pretty much any time, and that we have zero control over. (Call the agents, we may have just stumbled upon the plot of The Substance II.) We have reached overload: Just this week, Samantha Bee announced a new off-Broadway one-woman show about the “volcanic disruption” in her life, titled “How to Survive Menopause.” In her Parent Data newsletter, Hot Flash, author and endocrinologist Gillian Goddard covered a teensy yet promising study showing that pot could help relaaaax symptoms (read: sleep disruption, joint and muscle aches, mood swings, depression, low libido). Even Jessica Winter’s totally thoughtful and worth-it New Yorker story about the “women’s midlife crisis novel” (add the new Susan Minot to the Miranda July/Annie Ernaux pot, and stir) was instantly boiled down by our meno-coverage-overloaded brains into MENO ALERT! MENO ALERT!—a state of mind that was promptly summed up in a McSweeney’s post titled, “Is it Perimenopause or the Fascist Death Knell of Late-Stage Capitalism?” (A tidbit: “Is my hair thinning, or am I ripping it out because a thirty-four-time convicted, sexually abusive steak salesman with a Hannibal Lecter fetish is five points ahead in Arizona?”)Val told us to chillax, and we do everything Val tells us to do. But we couldn’t help wondering about this hit-by-a-truck feeling she describes. Here’s how she described it when we called (texted) her for a Spread Exclusive™: “It felt exactly like I was coming down with a really bad flu, which was scary. Body aches, chills, maybe most important that kind of sinking feeling you get when you think you’re getting sick, because there’s an emotional component, too, of…vulnerability, fear, dread. But then I realized that the feeling always lasted only around 30-45 seconds—a minute at most—before it completely resolved. And that’s when it hit me (like a truck): I was having menopause-related flashes, but without the heat.” Does Drew Barrymore/Naomi Watts/Judy Greer/Stacy London/Yer Mama have a pill for that?
Flash forward,
Rachel & Maggie
P.S. Please tune in this Friday for a very special edition of our podnership with Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!) that hits close to home for us both. We’re interviewing one of our heroes and, yeah, it’s kind of a big deal.
P.S. We heart you too. Just saying.

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