A Sensational 2nd Act

I'm Betrina Jones and this is my podcast, Rage Against the Menopause. Ossie author Kathy Lett has penned a remarkable twenty books, including best sellers Puberty Blues and most recently, Husband Replacement Therapy, which she has just sold.

The movie rights too.

But it's women like Kathy who've helped pave the way for podcasts like mine, her musings wonderbras for future generations, and helping to budge the stigma around metopause. Right from the get go, Kathy was very accessible, not going through pr gurus to secure our chat. An Ossie girl at heart despite her enormous success, enjoy episode nine, a sensational second act.

Kathy.

I have read Husband Replacement Therapy. I just finished it last night. I absolutely loved it. It's another masterpiece. I just don't know how you do it.

No, it is seriously, Dan, You're so lovely to say that. It's what I love about Australian women.

We stick together, you know where the Ossie's sisterhood is so strong. I always say that women are each other's human wonderbras, uplooking and supportive and making each other look bigger and better.

And you have just been my wonder bra. I think, thank.

You, no, you, I've looked up to you for so many years. My god, you wrote Puberty Blues at seventeen. You are one gifted bach. Can I say, aha, just a loud mouth?

I think no, No. I think it's because my mom's.

A teacher, and I was supposed to be a teacher too. My grandma was a teacher, but I left school at sixteen. I always joked that the only examination I've ever passed is my cervical smear test, the one you do want to pass. But I think I've got that teaching gene where some part of me always wants to educate. So I always write the book I wish i'd had when I was going through something.

So yes, Bebi Blues was just written for my.

Other surphi girlfriends to say to them, you are more more than just a live support system to a pair of breasts, you know. And then then when I worked out, it was so great to be a writer. You know, you get to work in jarmis all day, you can drink heavily on the job and have affairs and call

I just then write it up for my other for other women, saying this is what happened to me, this is how I found the funny.

I hope this helps you get through it. So that's really my entire Raison detra literally raison detra.

But it's a beautiful legacy, Kathy.

And that's exactly why I'm doing this podcast is because I hit perimenopause probably a couple of years ago, and you.

Know, I had a lifetime of crap.

Really, I've had endometriosis and polycystic go there long syndrome.

Oh well, you know a lot of women have it, and you know, a terrible proba.

It took five years to get our now thirteen year old daughter in multiple miscarriages. It was a long road, and then I got kidney cancer when she was three.

But I'm great, No no, no, don't feel sorry for me.

But what I'm saying is I think it is great to lean into all the wobbly bits because and that's why I'm doing the podcast because I came up against perimenopause and I thought, are you serious?

Now?

After all that behind me, I've got to do this, like are you fucking serious?

And there was just no information.

I felt like I was not armed and totally unprepared. And I think this largely is a legacy for Audrey, my daughter, because I think we need to have this conversation and normalize it, remove the stigma, because that would be my worst fear is when she eventually gets to that period of her life that she's facing the same wall of silence.

Well, I think my generation have tried very hard to take the sticking round of menopause. I mean, people wouldn't even talk.

About it when I first mentioned writing about it, the newspapers and stuff. And I remember my mother's generation, they would kind of gather in a cardigan to coven in the kitchen, whispering nervously about the.

Change, the change that was coming. And I thought that I thought Voldemort was on his way, preacher.

But at least my generation, we have, we have made it more normal to talk about the menopause. And I think for women, your life is into acts. I think the secret is surviving the interval, which is the menopause, where it is awful. I mean it is awful. You sweat more than Donald Trump doing a sadoco. You get the brain flog, I mean, Patsy. I was on the phone one day to my sister. I was on my phone, who were going, I've lost my phone. I've lost my phone. I can't find it.

Where is it? Where is it? I've lost without it? She said, Kath what are you talking on? And I was like, how could I be so stupid?

You do get the brain fog and all of that, But once you get through that, I'm telling you, it's the best time of a woman's life. You have a lot to look forward to, which we can talk about in a minute. But talking about the stigma, I think the more we talk about it the better. And I suppose women didn't talk about it because nobody wanted to

Well, you know that's the sexism is innate. It's in our language.

You know, a guy my age is as bigged up as a silver fox, whereas I dismissed as an old bag, a hag and a groan.

Correct.

And I make this joke in my book The Revenge Club, but you never hear a man dismissed as much undressed as ram.

Ever, that's so true.

And yet women are told what we can wear, what we can't wear. We can't wear short skirts, we mustn't know, we mustn't shure I did collar tabs.

You mustn't show our upper arms.

I'm like, who who is this good time gestapo telling me what I can and can't wear?

You're too old to have long hair, time you trimmed it. You know you need a bob cup by now you're fifty.

Come on, old girl, Well that's it exactly.

And then if you dare to put a picturerop on Instagram or Twitter or whatever of yourself without makeup or one thread of gray hair.

They're like, Oh, isn't she brave? She courageous.

I'm like, no, brave is racing into a burning building and saving a child.

Yeah, and showing you without makeup. So that's that's the next big battle.

But thanks to your podcast, like yours, books like mine, we are saying to women, this is what's going to happen.

You will get through it, and I'm.

Saying you will have a sensational second act, so you have a lot lot to look forward to.

I love that when you're sort of facing it head on, you do wonder. You know, there has been times where I've thought, is this it?

Like?

Is this now as good as it gets?

And I love in your book Husband Replacement Therapy, And I'll read page two.

Ninety four if you can indulge me.

You told me that there was so much life to enjoy in your second act. He ran a hand through his unruly hair. You said it was like adolescence in reverse, a lovely rebirth.

I just love that.

Well, it is it a way?

You know, It's like adolescens is set with wrinkles instead of pimples.

So true.

But you know what, Kathy, it's because of the work and the legacy that women in your generation have done, that I can do this podcast, that.

I can lean into it.

You know, I think we passed the baton on just as I will to my daughter. I think that's what we do talking about mothers and daughters. The mother in this book is horrendous.

Isn't she a piece of work?

Yes?

But see I have a beautiful mother, gorgeous, wonderful mother. But a lot of my girlfriends have very fractious and difficult relationships with their mothers. And I think these women probably should never have had children. But it was expected. That's what you did. It was just you know, you got married, you had babies. Was Women now can make choices about whether or not they think they have got the maternal instinct. And a lot of women now, I

They call it netflix and chill, you know, rather than having said and I think it's a lot.

I think it's partly because they're looking at their careers, which they're loving, and they understand that if they have a baby, that career will be derailed.

I mean, my generation thought we could have it all.

We just ended up doing it all and it was absolutely exhausting. Well now, I think women can have it all, but just not all at once unless you've got a beat male husband. If you've got a fella who is if you're the breadwinner and he's the beta male, you know, the earth father, yes that could work, but there's not many of those guys around. Whenever I give talks, some schools now always said women, young girls, be very careful choosing your partner. If you choose an now for male,

How does it work in your life?

I'm very very lucky.

You know.

It's like a tag team. It has to be to enable me to do breakfast radio. Oh mate, I leave the house at three so and at the moment he just had his knee. Dumb god, you don't think I'm feeling it. I didn't realize just how much he did.

That's what men normally say when a woman gets filled. I happ he heard his knee because he was kneeling before you.

You're going to laugh, do you know how it happened. So we've never been to Luna Park. So we're Victorian born and bred, but regional Victoria. We're from a place called Wangaratta. I'm near Aubrey. There is a song about Wangaratta, that's right. But we've been in Melbourne since I think ninety five. But we've never been to Luna Park. And so our daughter one weekend, what are we going to do this weekend?

Oh?

Mom and dad, we've never never been to Luna Park. All right, we'll go to Luna Park. And he was getting on the ghost train and so his knee kind of went one way and his foot went the other way, and I heard the snap, and he and his girlish scream and he downplays, downplayed it. He goes, oh, look on all right, and I said, no, I don't think you are. You starting like you're breaking out in a sweat, and every because it was the end carriage, so everyone's looking behind thinking.

What is this wanka doing. We just want to go on the ride, and he said, you know what, I'm just going to sit out.

You and Audrey go. So we went on the ghost train. Does that make me a bad wife? We went on the ride and got back and it was pretty obvious that he needed to go to first daid so and then it's just sort of that was a few months ago and it's just progressively got worse. So what he'd done, he torn the moniscus right at the back of the now've done that?

Oh have you? What was your recovery like.

It's pretty damn slow. Yes, it's got to do all the exercises. Just make sure he does all the exercise.

Yeah, gosh, how did you do it? Catherine?

Well, all my injuries from being healthy. So that was a jogging injury.

Oh no, And I've been knocked off my push bike twice, had three show surgeries.

Being nothing is very very bad.

My new exercise regime is just the disco diet. After we drink and eat as much as we want, then I put the music on and we dance and dance and dance.

One morning we got running.

I woke up and I looked at my phone, I'd done twenty two thousand steps.

Wait a minute, oh my god.

By shagging the bartender up down, And then I thought, no, we were.

Just busting out some postmenopausal abba dance moves.

Oh my god. Yes, that's the best exercise regime is just keep dancing. You know. That's a very important a part of your second act.

What music do you like to Bookie too?

Oh, I like the I like R and B.

I like all the all the feminist Torch songs. You know, I like love all that so that you can't my generation.

Cannot dance to those songs.

Sister Sledge, We're up and at it of course.

Yeah, I know Freedom from Appa.

Actually, are you serious?

Yeah, she's having an amazing second that And when I asked her about the AI show, you know, yeah, which is extraordinary. Way you see it, you feel like you're out the concert, she said, Darling. Even Viking goddesses get old, she said.

About a two of the world. While I'm lying on my couch.

She's beautiful, is it? She got?

I love those that band. As I can remember as a three year old, I used to have Dad's mini extension called and Mum wrapped foil around it. So it looked like a microphone and I would stand on the hearth in front of the fire and I'd sing a songs and I thought God.

And also the great thing about those songs they were the at the time, the rock industry was very male dominated, and then here these two women singing about heartbreak and lusting after men, Give me a man after midnight, And they're actually quite radical feminist songs.

Some of them very agressive for the time.

What I love about Australia is that where we don't think optimisms an eye disease, but we're quite skeptical, always say we have chronic skepticemia.

Yes, and we've got a good sense of irony.

So that that mix of irony, skepticism and optimism is delicious and I think it boosts our immune system and lowers our blood pressure.

Yeah, we don't take ourselves too seriously.

Yeah, but I get thinking about humor for a minute too.

I think that's also what makes Australian women so fabulous is the way when we get together we cackle like Cooko Boroughs and it's very therapeutic and very cathartic. And if you are going through a bad menopause, I would say it's vitally important that you go on girls' nights out. You know, yes, you have to be hospitalized from hilarity, but you're also we have a strip op your emotional undies, which is a psychological strip tease that reveals all and talk.

About how you really are feeling and find out, just find me out. You're not alone.

It's so it's so helpful, and it's not just me imagining women are funny. Anthropologists say that women laugh more often than men, especially in all female groups, in every society on the planet.

So and I know what we're laughing at. We're laughing at the same thing. We're laughing about male idiosyncrasies.

And also the fact that whether butt of God's biological jokes when you were telling me all the things you've been through, I mean, endo.

Is the worst.

It's ain of that and being misdiagnosed constantly by a male dominated medical profession.

Yes, but you know, and I thought one day, even God is a fellah because you think of all the things.

Women go through, from when you first get taken hostage by your hormones once a month is a teenager. Then there's pregnancy where everything swells to sumer wrestler proportions and the childbirth where you stretch your birth can.

Now the customer, what five six kilometers? And there's masts. Then there's the metopause, and it's just when everything goes quiet, you grow a beard.

Yes, and how could that be fair?

Yeah?

Get hair.

Mccrama, hanging basket arrangement going on in my can area?

What about you? How's your how's your chin sprown?

Well, I've always had chin sprouting because of the polycystic Overian syndrome.

But I you know what.

The best thing I've ever done in life. Kathy is gone and got laser.

Hair removal right.

Oh my god, it doesn't work on the white hairs. I've got like one white hair on the right.

Of my chin that I have to pluck.

But oh, I don't think I've done my legs since maybe last October, like nearly a year.

It's tremendous. It's tremendous.

Wow is it painful? Though?

No?

No?

You know.

The only thing I got like a little bit of a reaction.

The first few I had like a I got hives, like itchy, So I had like the spaghetti four itching my.

Legs oh no, gosh, and.

My husband said, we're never eating it, never ever eating spaghetti again.

You've got to throw that fork out. But no, no, it's brilliant. I do want to draw. There's something else.

In the book that really really touched my heart as well, and I did feel it once I turned fifty. I did you know, Being in the media, I have had a strong sense over a few years about imposter syndrome, especially as you're getting older and.

You think, oh.

But then when I turned fifty, I felt like I didn't. I did care, but I had that sort of not everyone's going to like me, and you know what, I'm okay with that. And I've been through too much shit and you've you've written I'm drawing up my bucket list, or my fucket list, as I prefer to call it. I don't want to keep putting things off until I have time, because that time never comes, does it. Somewhere along the way, I feel as though I lost my identity.

I think a lot of women going through menopause can night with that.

Well, it's the menopause is really tricky. You lose your confidence, your testosterone. But what will happen that's good is you. First of all, Okay, women have brought up to be decorative and demure.

We're too nice. So all the research shows where a man and.

Woman start talking at the same time, the woman always pulls back. But the nice thing about going through the menopause, once you get over the brain fog and the feeling and secure and that whole transitional period, is that you get a kind of of fuck it, I'm fifty gene kicks it when you no longer care what people think

Little bit more like a bloke actually, and it's so so fabulous.

I mean, sometimes I'm thinking something and I actually say it out loudly, think, oh my god, did I actually say that?

But it's FuG mended that all the time.

Yes, we just do not. But do you think, Kathy, sorry to cut you off.

Do you think it's how we're processed to be to behave that we get to a point where it's like, you know, what, I am going to actually start behaving like a man, because being nice and being a people pleaser is getting me nowhere, and I'm sick of this. So I'm actually going to start swinging my balls as well, because why not.

Well, I wouldn't say balls, I'd say we have labby or steel, you know. And it's and it's partly two.

Because you're no longer so so in the so much in the male gaze.

So because all our lives.

We've been judged on how we look, and constantly there's comment on how we look, and it's exhausting and as much as you try and ignore it, even if you fight.

Back, it's so tiring.

But when, because we live in an age is society, whenever they do research with men and women about what we find attractive in each other, men always put looks first and they put personality about tenth. Women always put personality first and looks way down, way down the line.

So when you're no longer so.

Intensely in the male gaze, it's the best feeling because it then's come into your true self.

The wonder bra for women that is Kathy Lett. She was so great. The second part of my interview with the best selling authors fills over into the final and tenth episode of this first series of Rage Against the Menopause, Carpe the hell out of DM. Through her penmanship and comedy, Kathy gives hope to women grappling with the symptoms and shines a spotlight on the afterlife of menopause and that we will feel normal again. All Hail Saint Kathy Lett. I'm Petrina Jones.