Here’s an idea to spice up a holiday evening: Gather your coffee klatch girlfriends, or your BFFs, or even your sisters and/or daughters, make popcorn and margaritas, and watch “Love, Sweat, and Tears,” the new documentary about menopause.
Even better, snuggle up and watch it with your partner, because the red thread running through all the information about hot flashes and mood swings is that our sex lives don’t have to be disrupted or put on the shelf forever because of menopause. We can still be sexual beings; we can still be attractive; we darned well can still have sex.
Sound familiar?
The movie was a labor of love for Dr. Pam Gaudry, an ob/gyn who specializes in treating older women. After years of consulting with patients in the throes of menopause, Dr. Pam came to realize that of all the difficulties accompanying menopause, the most disturbing to many of her patients was the disruption of their sex lives. Losing this deep and intimate connection with loved partners was the most distressing part of menopause. And she knew that losing sexual intimacy is completely unnecessary.
Dr. Pam wants to educate women about menopause, about how to stay vital, healthy, and sexually fulfilled. She wants to blow up the social stigma surrounding menopause (that we’re dried-up old crones). “Women should look forward to this transition,” she says. “I want them to know what to do to protect their vaginas so they can have exciting, comfortable, and worry free sexual intercourse for the rest of their lives.”
In the film, Dr. Pam travels across America interviewing actors, comedians, clergy, medical professionals, as well as ordinary men and women about love and menopause. Joan Rivers is the headliner, in what turned out to be her last interview before her death in 2014. “I’m on a mission,” says Dr. Pam in her interview with Rivers, “to save menopausal vaginas in America.”
“Well, sign me up,” says Rivers.
In the course of the film, Dr. Pam interviews several colleagues that MiddlesexMD readers have met—Mary Jo Rapini and Dr. Michael Krychman. I make a cameo appearance, too.
Basically, Dr. Pam covers the same ground that we do here at MiddlesexMD because we have the same mission and message. She does it holistically, with humor and a lot of sage advice. “I want women to know why they must protect their vaginas,” she says. “I want estrogen in their vaginas when they’re going into the ground. And no woman should die without using a vibrator.”
You can rent the movie on YouTube, Netflix, or Amazon. (Run time about an hour and twenty minutes)
Do not hesitate to gather selected friends and family and watch this movie together. For you and your honey, it’s required viewing. A pop quiz will follow.
Dr. Barb DePree, M.D., has been a gynecologist and women’s health provider for almost 30 years and a menopause care specialist for the past ten.
1 comment
Great documentary. Funny. Loved it.
But I felt the movie exaggerated by suggesting that Viagra is the reason that women over 60 have to deal with sex these days, compared to the old days when both men and women somehow “declined” together into a harmonious no-sex situation (Dr. Castellanos suggests this in the interview).
Based on not only my own level of desire and function in my late 60’s, but also my mother’s telling from her father from 50 years ago, he was raring to go well into his 60’s and 70’s, while my grandmother went off sex in menopause. So I very much disagree with Dr. Castellanos’s generalization.
I do understand that Viagra could be disruptive to for some couples if ED has been a long-standing problem. But Viagra isn’t to blame in many cases — might as well blame men for being in good health.