Speaker 1: I'm Betrina Jones and this is my podcast, Rage Against
Speaker 1: the Menopause. Ossie author Kathy Lett has penned a remarkable
Speaker 1: twenty books, including best sellers Puberty Blues and most recently,
Speaker 1: Husband Replacement Therapy, which she has just sold.
Speaker 2: The movie rights too.
Speaker 1: But it's women like Kathy who've helped pave the way
Speaker 1: for podcasts like mine, her musings wonderbras for future generations,
Speaker 1: and helping to budge the stigma around metopause. Right from
Speaker 1: the get go, Kathy was very accessible, not going through
Speaker 1: pr gurus to secure our chat. An Ossie girl at
Speaker 1: heart despite her enormous success, enjoy episode nine, a sensational
Speaker 1: second act.
Speaker 2: Kathy.
Speaker 1: I have read Husband Replacement Therapy. I just finished it
Speaker 1: last night. I absolutely loved it. It's another masterpiece. I
Speaker 1: just don't know how you do it.
Speaker 3: No, it is seriously, Dan, You're so lovely to say that.
Speaker 3: It's what I love about Australian women.
Speaker 4: We stick together, you know where the Ossie's sisterhood is
Speaker 4: so strong. I always say that women are each other's
Speaker 4: human wonderbras, uplooking and supportive and making each other look
Speaker 4: bigger and better.
Speaker 3: And you have just been my wonder bra. I think, thank.
Speaker 1: You, no, you, I've looked up to you for so
Speaker 1: many years. My god, you wrote Puberty Blues at seventeen.
Speaker 1: You are one gifted bach. Can I say, aha, just
Speaker 1: a loud mouth?
Speaker 3: I think no, No. I think it's because my mom's.
Speaker 4: A teacher, and I was supposed to be a teacher too.
Speaker 4: My grandma was a teacher, but I left school at sixteen.
Speaker 4: I always joked that the only examination I've ever passed
Speaker 4: is my cervical smear test, the one you do want
Speaker 4: to pass. But I think I've got that teaching gene
Speaker 4: where some part of me always wants to educate. So
Speaker 4: I always write the book I wish i'd had when
Speaker 4: I was going through something.
Speaker 3: So yes, Bebi Blues was just written for my.
Speaker 4: Other surphi girlfriends to say to them, you are more
Speaker 4: more than just a live support system to a pair
Speaker 4: of breasts, you know. And then then when I worked out,
Speaker 4: it was so great to be a writer. You know,
Speaker 4: you get to work in jarmis all day, you can
Speaker 4: drink heavily on the job and have affairs and call
Speaker 4: it research. I just kept writing, and everything that happened
Speaker 4: to me being a single girl around Sydney and you know,
Speaker 4: being then being in love and moving to England and
Speaker 4: having children and and then you know, going through the
Speaker 4: menopause and going through divorce or whatever.
Speaker 3: I just then write it up for my other for
Speaker 3: other women, saying this is what happened to me, this
Speaker 3: is how I found the funny.
Speaker 4: I hope this helps you get through it. So that's
Speaker 4: really my entire Raison detra literally raison detra.
Speaker 2: But it's a beautiful legacy, Kathy.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly why I'm doing this podcast is because
Speaker 1: I hit perimenopause probably a couple of years ago, and you.
Speaker 2: Know, I had a lifetime of crap.
Speaker 1: Really, I've had endometriosis and polycystic go there long syndrome.
Speaker 2: Oh well, you know a lot of women have it,
Speaker 2: and you know, a terrible proba.
Speaker 1: It took five years to get our now thirteen year
Speaker 1: old daughter in multiple miscarriages. It was a long road,
Speaker 1: and then I got kidney cancer when she was three.
Speaker 2: But I'm great, No no, no, don't feel sorry for me.
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is I think it is great
Speaker 1: to lean into all the wobbly bits because and that's
Speaker 1: why I'm doing the podcast because I came up against
Speaker 1: perimenopause and I thought, are you serious?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: After all that behind me, I've got to do this,
Speaker 1: like are you fucking serious?
Speaker 2: And there was just no information.
Speaker 1: I felt like I was not armed and totally unprepared.
Speaker 1: And I think this largely is a legacy for Audrey,
Speaker 1: my daughter, because I think we need to have this
Speaker 1: conversation and normalize it, remove the stigma, because that would
Speaker 1: be my worst fear is when she eventually gets to
Speaker 1: that period of her life that she's facing the same
Speaker 1: wall of silence.
Speaker 3: Well, I think my generation have tried very hard to
Speaker 3: take the sticking round of menopause. I mean, people wouldn't
Speaker 3: even talk.
Speaker 4: About it when I first mentioned writing about it, the
Speaker 4: newspapers and stuff. And I remember my mother's generation, they
Speaker 4: would kind of gather in a cardigan to coven in
Speaker 4: the kitchen, whispering nervously about the.
Speaker 3: Change, the change that was coming. And I thought that
Speaker 3: I thought Voldemort was on his way, preacher.
Speaker 4: But at least my generation, we have, we have made
Speaker 4: it more normal to talk about the menopause. And I
Speaker 4: think for women, your life is into acts. I think
Speaker 4: the secret is surviving the interval, which is the menopause,
Speaker 4: where it is awful. I mean it is awful. You
Speaker 4: sweat more than Donald Trump doing a sadoco. You get
Speaker 4: the brain flog, I mean, Patsy. I was on the
Speaker 4: phone one day to my sister. I was on my phone,
Speaker 4: who were going, I've lost my phone. I've lost my phone.
Speaker 4: I can't find it.
Speaker 3: Where is it? Where is it? I've lost without it?
Speaker 3: She said, Kath what are you talking on? And I
Speaker 3: was like, how could I be so stupid?
Speaker 4: You do get the brain fog and all of that,
Speaker 4: But once you get through that, I'm telling you, it's
Speaker 4: the best time of a woman's life. You have a
Speaker 4: lot to look forward to, which we can talk about
Speaker 4: in a minute. But talking about the stigma, I think
Speaker 4: the more we talk about it the better. And I
Speaker 4: suppose women didn't talk about it because nobody wanted to
Speaker 4: see themselves as being no longer second. Because once women
Speaker 4: couldn't have babies, we were deemed to have passed our
Speaker 4: amuse by date and put out to career pasture yep,
Speaker 4: which is outrageous, and that age of sexism still exists,
Speaker 4: which where that's my next big battle is to fight
Speaker 4: that for your generation, because you know, women my age
Speaker 4: are just deemed to have been We're given the kind
Speaker 4: of the cloak of invisibility and just told to disappear.
Speaker 3: Well, you know that's the sexism is innate. It's in
Speaker 3: our language.
Speaker 4: You know, a guy my age is as bigged up
Speaker 4: as a silver fox, whereas I dismissed as an old bag,
Speaker 4: a hag and a groan.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 4: And I make this joke in my book The Revenge Club,
Speaker 4: but you never hear a man dismissed as much undressed
Speaker 4: as ram.
Speaker 2: Ever, that's so true.
Speaker 4: And yet women are told what we can wear, what
Speaker 4: we can't wear. We can't wear short skirts, we mustn't know,
Speaker 4: we mustn't shure I did collar tabs.
Speaker 3: You mustn't show our upper arms.
Speaker 4: I'm like, who who is this good time gestapo telling
Speaker 4: me what I can and can't wear?
Speaker 1: You're too old to have long hair, time you trimmed it.
Speaker 1: You know you need a bob cup by now you're fifty.
Speaker 3: Come on, old girl, Well that's it exactly.
Speaker 4: And then if you dare to put a picturerop on
Speaker 4: Instagram or Twitter or whatever of yourself without makeup or
Speaker 4: one thread of gray hair.
Speaker 3: They're like, Oh, isn't she brave? She courageous.
Speaker 4: I'm like, no, brave is racing into a burning building
Speaker 4: and saving a child.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and showing you without makeup. So that's that's the
Speaker 3: next big battle.
Speaker 4: But thanks to your podcast, like yours, books like mine,
Speaker 4: we are saying to women, this is what's going to happen.
Speaker 3: You will get through it, and I'm.
Speaker 4: Saying you will have a sensational second act, so you
Speaker 4: have a lot lot to look forward to.
Speaker 1: I love that when you're sort of facing it head on,
Speaker 1: you do wonder. You know, there has been times where
Speaker 1: I've thought, is this it?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Is this now as good as it gets?
Speaker 1: And I love in your book Husband Replacement Therapy, And
Speaker 1: I'll read page two.
Speaker 2: Ninety four if you can indulge me.
Speaker 1: You told me that there was so much life to
Speaker 1: enjoy in your second act. He ran a hand through
Speaker 1: his unruly hair. You said it was like adolescence in reverse,
Speaker 1: a lovely rebirth.
Speaker 2: I just love that.
Speaker 3: Well, it is it a way?
Speaker 4: You know, It's like adolescens is set with wrinkles instead
Speaker 4: of pimples.
Speaker 2: So true.
Speaker 1: But you know what, Kathy, it's because of the work
Speaker 1: and the legacy that women in your generation have done,
Speaker 1: that I can do this podcast, that.
Speaker 2: I can lean into it.
Speaker 1: You know, I think we passed the baton on just
Speaker 1: as I will to my daughter. I think that's what
Speaker 1: we do talking about mothers and daughters. The mother in
Speaker 1: this book is horrendous.
Speaker 2: Isn't she a piece of work?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: But see I have a beautiful mother, gorgeous, wonderful mother.
Speaker 4: But a lot of my girlfriends have very fractious and
Speaker 4: difficult relationships with their mothers. And I think these women
Speaker 4: probably should never have had children. But it was expected.
Speaker 4: That's what you did. It was just you know, you
Speaker 4: got married, you had babies. Was Women now can make
Speaker 4: choices about whether or not they think they have got
Speaker 4: the maternal instinct. And a lot of women now, I
Speaker 4: mean the birth rates are really low. And also a
Speaker 4: lot of young women embracing celibacy the whole.
Speaker 3: They call it netflix and chill, you know, rather than
Speaker 3: having said and I think it's a lot.
Speaker 4: I think it's partly because they're looking at their careers,
Speaker 4: which they're loving, and they understand that if they have
Speaker 4: a baby, that career will be derailed.
Speaker 3: I mean, my generation thought we could have it all.
Speaker 4: We just ended up doing it all and it was
Speaker 4: absolutely exhausting. Well now, I think women can have it all,
Speaker 4: but just not all at once unless you've got a
Speaker 4: beat male husband. If you've got a fella who is
Speaker 4: if you're the breadwinner and he's the beta male, you know,
Speaker 4: the earth father, yes that could work, but there's not
Speaker 4: many of those guys around. Whenever I give talks, some
Speaker 4: schools now always said women, young girls, be very careful
Speaker 4: choosing your partner. If you choose an now for male,
Speaker 4: you know, when your child is sick. I mean, you'll
Speaker 4: be the one expected to step back. But if you
Speaker 4: choose a beta male beat to male's adore you don't
Speaker 4: bore you and do all your chowls for you. So,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe like a wife in other words, So
Speaker 4: maybe that's the kind of guy you got to look
Speaker 4: for if you want a big, big, beautiful career.
Speaker 3: How does it work in your life?
Speaker 2: I'm very very lucky.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like a tag team. It has to be to
Speaker 1: enable me to do breakfast radio. Oh mate, I leave
Speaker 1: the house at three so and at the moment he
Speaker 1: just had his knee. Dumb god, you don't think I'm
Speaker 1: feeling it. I didn't realize just how much he did.
Speaker 4: That's what men normally say when a woman gets filled.
Speaker 4: I happ he heard his knee because he was kneeling
Speaker 4: before you.
Speaker 1: You're going to laugh, do you know how it happened.
Speaker 1: So we've never been to Luna Park. So we're Victorian
Speaker 1: born and bred, but regional Victoria. We're from a place
Speaker 1: called Wangaratta. I'm near Aubrey. There is a song about Wangaratta,
Speaker 1: that's right. But we've been in Melbourne since I think
Speaker 1: ninety five. But we've never been to Luna Park. And
Speaker 1: so our daughter one weekend, what are we going to
Speaker 1: do this weekend?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Mom and dad, we've never never been to Luna Park.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll go to Luna Park. And he was
Speaker 1: getting on the ghost train and so his knee kind
Speaker 1: of went one way and his foot went the other way,
Speaker 1: and I heard the snap, and he and his girlish
Speaker 1: scream and he downplays, downplayed it. He goes, oh, look
Speaker 1: on all right, and I said, no, I don't think
Speaker 1: you are. You starting like you're breaking out in a sweat,
Speaker 1: and every because it was the end carriage, so everyone's
Speaker 1: looking behind thinking.
Speaker 2: What is this wanka doing. We just want to go
Speaker 2: on the ride, and he said, you know what, I'm
Speaker 2: just going to sit out.
Speaker 1: You and Audrey go. So we went on the ghost train.
Speaker 1: Does that make me a bad wife? We went on
Speaker 1: the ride and got back and it was pretty obvious
Speaker 1: that he needed to go to first daid so and
Speaker 1: then it's just sort of that was a few months
Speaker 1: ago and it's just progressively got worse. So what he'd done,
Speaker 1: he torn the moniscus right at the back of the
Speaker 1: now've done that?
Speaker 2: Oh have you? What was your recovery like.
Speaker 4: It's pretty damn slow. Yes, it's got to do all
Speaker 4: the exercises. Just make sure he does all the exercise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gosh, how did you do it? Catherine?
Speaker 3: Well, all my injuries from being healthy. So that was
Speaker 3: a jogging injury.
Speaker 4: Oh no, And I've been knocked off my push bike twice,
Speaker 4: had three show surgeries.
Speaker 3: Being nothing is very very bad.
Speaker 4: My new exercise regime is just the disco diet. After
Speaker 4: we drink and eat as much as we want, then
Speaker 4: I put the music on and we dance and dance
Speaker 4: and dance.
Speaker 3: One morning we got running.
Speaker 4: I woke up and I looked at my phone, I'd
Speaker 4: done twenty two thousand steps.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, oh my god.
Speaker 3: By shagging the bartender up down, And then I thought, no,
Speaker 3: we were.
Speaker 4: Just busting out some postmenopausal abba dance moves.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Yes, that's the best exercise regime is
Speaker 3: just keep dancing. You know. That's a very important a
Speaker 3: part of your second act.
Speaker 2: What music do you like to Bookie too?
Speaker 3: Oh, I like the I like R and B.
Speaker 4: I like all the all the feminist Torch songs. You know,
Speaker 4: I like love all that so that you can't my generation.
Speaker 3: Cannot dance to those songs.
Speaker 4: Sister Sledge, We're up and at it of course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know Freedom from Appa.
Speaker 2: Actually, are you serious?
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's having an amazing second that And when I
Speaker 4: asked her about the AI show, you know, yeah, which
Speaker 4: is extraordinary. Way you see it, you feel like you're
Speaker 4: out the concert, she said, Darling. Even Viking goddesses get old,
Speaker 4: she said.
Speaker 3: About a two of the world. While I'm lying on
Speaker 3: my couch.
Speaker 2: She's beautiful, is it? She got?
Speaker 1: I love those that band. As I can remember as
Speaker 1: a three year old, I used to have Dad's mini
Speaker 1: extension called and Mum wrapped foil around it. So it
Speaker 1: looked like a microphone and I would stand on the
Speaker 1: hearth in front of the fire and I'd sing a
Speaker 1: songs and I thought God.
Speaker 4: And also the great thing about those songs they were
Speaker 4: the at the time, the rock industry was very male dominated,
Speaker 4: and then here these two women singing about heartbreak and
Speaker 4: lusting after men, Give me a man after midnight, And
Speaker 4: they're actually quite radical feminist songs.
Speaker 2: Some of them very agressive for the time.
Speaker 4: What I love about Australia is that where we don't
Speaker 4: think optimisms an eye disease, but we're quite skeptical, always
Speaker 4: say we have chronic skepticemia.
Speaker 3: Yes, and we've got a good sense of irony.
Speaker 4: So that that mix of irony, skepticism and optimism is
Speaker 4: delicious and I think it boosts our immune system and
Speaker 4: lowers our blood pressure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't take ourselves too seriously.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I get thinking about humor for a minute too.
Speaker 4: I think that's also what makes Australian women so fabulous
Speaker 4: is the way when we get together we cackle like
Speaker 4: Cooko Boroughs and it's very therapeutic and very cathartic. And
Speaker 4: if you are going through a bad menopause, I would
Speaker 4: say it's vitally important that you go on girls' nights out.
Speaker 4: You know, yes, you have to be hospitalized from hilarity,
Speaker 4: but you're also we have a strip op your emotional undies,
Speaker 4: which is a psychological strip tease that reveals all and talk.
Speaker 3: About how you really are feeling and find out, just
Speaker 3: find me out. You're not alone.
Speaker 4: It's so it's so helpful, and it's not just me
Speaker 4: imagining women are funny. Anthropologists say that women laugh more
Speaker 4: often than men, especially in all female groups, in every
Speaker 4: society on the planet.
Speaker 3: So and I know what we're laughing at. We're laughing
Speaker 3: at the same thing. We're laughing about male idiosyncrasies.
Speaker 4: And also the fact that whether butt of God's biological
Speaker 4: jokes when you were telling me all the things you've
Speaker 4: been through, I mean, endo.
Speaker 3: Is the worst.
Speaker 4: It's ain of that and being misdiagnosed constantly by a
Speaker 4: male dominated medical profession.
Speaker 3: Yes, but you know, and I thought one day, even
Speaker 3: God is a fellah because you think of all the things.
Speaker 4: Women go through, from when you first get taken hostage
Speaker 4: by your hormones once a month is a teenager. Then
Speaker 4: there's pregnancy where everything swells to sumer wrestler proportions and
Speaker 4: the childbirth where you stretch your birth can.
Speaker 3: Now the customer, what five six kilometers? And there's masts.
Speaker 3: Then there's the metopause, and it's just when everything goes quiet,
Speaker 3: you grow a beard.
Speaker 2: Yes, and how could that be fair?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Get hair.
Speaker 4: Mccrama, hanging basket arrangement going on in my can area?
Speaker 3: What about you? How's your how's your chin sprown?
Speaker 1: Well, I've always had chin sprouting because of the polycystic
Speaker 1: Overian syndrome.
Speaker 2: But I you know what.
Speaker 1: The best thing I've ever done in life. Kathy is
Speaker 1: gone and got laser.
Speaker 2: Hair removal right.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it doesn't work on the white hairs.
Speaker 1: I've got like one white hair on the right.
Speaker 2: Of my chin that I have to pluck.
Speaker 1: But oh, I don't think I've done my legs since
Speaker 1: maybe last October, like nearly a year.
Speaker 2: It's tremendous. It's tremendous.
Speaker 3: Wow is it painful? Though?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: The only thing I got like a little bit of
Speaker 2: a reaction.
Speaker 1: The first few I had like a I got hives,
Speaker 1: like itchy, So I had like the spaghetti four itching my.
Speaker 3: Legs oh no, gosh, and.
Speaker 1: My husband said, we're never eating it, never ever eating
Speaker 1: spaghetti again.
Speaker 2: You've got to throw that fork out. But no, no,
Speaker 2: it's brilliant. I do want to draw. There's something else.
Speaker 1: In the book that really really touched my heart as well,
Speaker 1: and I did feel it once I turned fifty. I
Speaker 1: did you know, Being in the media, I have had
Speaker 1: a strong sense over a few years about imposter syndrome,
Speaker 1: especially as you're getting older and.
Speaker 2: You think, oh.
Speaker 1: But then when I turned fifty, I felt like I didn't.
Speaker 1: I did care, but I had that sort of not
Speaker 1: everyone's going to like me, and you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: okay with that. And I've been through too much shit
Speaker 1: and you've you've written I'm drawing up my bucket list,
Speaker 1: or my fucket list, as I prefer to call it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to keep putting things off until I
Speaker 1: have time, because that time never comes, does it. Somewhere
Speaker 1: along the way, I feel as though I lost my identity.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of women going through menopause can
Speaker 2: night with that.
Speaker 4: Well, it's the menopause is really tricky. You lose your confidence,
Speaker 4: your testosterone. But what will happen that's good is you.
Speaker 4: First of all, Okay, women have brought up to be
Speaker 4: decorative and demure.
Speaker 3: We're too nice. So all the research shows where a
Speaker 3: man and.
Speaker 4: Woman start talking at the same time, the woman always
Speaker 4: pulls back. But the nice thing about going through the menopause,
Speaker 4: once you get over the brain fog and the feeling
Speaker 4: and secure and that whole transitional period, is that you
Speaker 4: get a kind of of fuck it, I'm fifty gene
Speaker 4: kicks it when you no longer care what people think
Speaker 4: about you. This is so liberating for women. And it's
Speaker 4: partly hormonal because your estrogen drops, which is your caring
Speaker 4: sharing hormone, and your testosterone comes up a little bit,
Speaker 4: so you get a little bit more bolshy, a little
Speaker 4: bit more selfish, a.
Speaker 3: Little bit more like a bloke actually, and it's so
Speaker 3: so fabulous.
Speaker 4: I mean, sometimes I'm thinking something and I actually say
Speaker 4: it out loudly, think, oh my god, did I actually
Speaker 4: say that?
Speaker 3: But it's FuG mended that all the time.
Speaker 2: Yes, we just do not. But do you think, Kathy,
Speaker 2: sorry to cut you off.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's how we're processed to be to
Speaker 1: behave that we get to a point where it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, what, I am going to actually start behaving
Speaker 1: like a man, because being nice and being a people
Speaker 1: pleaser is getting me nowhere, and I'm sick of this.
Speaker 1: So I'm actually going to start swinging my balls as well,
Speaker 1: because why not.
Speaker 3: Well, I wouldn't say balls, I'd say we have labby
Speaker 3: or steel, you know. And it's and it's partly two.
Speaker 4: Because you're no longer so so in the so much
Speaker 4: in the male gaze.
Speaker 3: So because all our lives.
Speaker 4: We've been judged on how we look, and constantly there's
Speaker 4: comment on how we look, and it's exhausting and as
Speaker 4: much as you try and ignore it, even if you fight.
Speaker 3: Back, it's so tiring.
Speaker 4: But when, because we live in an age is society,
Speaker 4: whenever they do research with men and women about what
Speaker 4: we find attractive in each other, men always put looks
Speaker 4: first and they put personality about tenth. Women always put
Speaker 4: personality first and looks way down, way down the line.
Speaker 3: So when you're no longer so.
Speaker 4: Intensely in the male gaze, it's the best feeling because
Speaker 4: it then's come into your true self.
Speaker 1: The wonder bra for women that is Kathy Lett. She
Speaker 1: was so great. The second part of my interview with
Speaker 1: the best selling authors fills over into the final and
Speaker 1: tenth episode of this first series of Rage Against the Menopause,
Speaker 1: Carpe the hell out of DM. Through her penmanship and comedy,
Speaker 1: Kathy gives hope to women grappling with the symptoms and
Speaker 1: shines a spotlight on the afterlife of menopause and that
Speaker 1: we will feel normal again. All Hail Saint Kathy Lett.
Speaker 1: I'm Petrina Jones.