Happy Menopause Month!

...that frankly I'm not that happy about

Luba Ertel/Unsplash

At the risk of sounding like a grumplestiltskin, I have to let you know I despise ‘awareness months’ and international ‘days’. They were a bane of my job as a reporter and even more of an annoyance as a features editor.

I am so firmly on team no-bullshit these days that I cannot deal with efforts to trump up coverage to drive someone else’s business. Because that is what these months have become. 

In my newspaper times, I always felt we were manufacturing something rather than covering a new development – and that’s just a bad pit-in-your-stomach feeling for any journalist worth their salt. The whole exercise is PR-driven, but you really need to be behind the scenes to see it play out in the traditional media and now, on social media. You should see the pitches I have in my in-box this month: everything from interviews with drug company executives for breast cancer treatments to menopause sleep tips from mattress companies. (Although nothing will ever beat the press …