Editor's Letter

Breaking Silence

Cail Sheehy is known to Vanity Fair readers as the author of some of our most talkedabout political profiles—Gary Hart, Gorbachev, Bob Dole, Mrs. Thatcher, and, most recently, Saddam Hussein. She is also, of course, the author of Passages, that bestselling analysis of our changing emotional landscape. In this issue, after more than four years of exploring public lives, she returns to investigating private life—the private life of every woman and the private life of every man who lives it with her.

Menopause.

In our youth-obsessed culture, the very word is a roomemptier. The pregnancy club is for women a joyous one; the menopause club is one nobody wants to admit she has joined. This is among the reasons the article by Sheehy (page 222) is so remarkable. She has broken the taboo. She has got notable women talking on the record about the subject. And she has led the way, with candor about herself. Her life seemed almost perfect—recently married to a man she adored, the new mother of an adopted daughter, racing around the world as a high-profile journalist—when she was hit by "the first bombshell of the battle with menopause." It set her on the trail of a story that could literally affect her own health, happiness, and longevity. In the process she hoped to erase the stigma that has made women suffer for so long in silence, and ''render normalcy to a normal physical process. ''

She found much that is disquieting about the medical approach, but she also found a new way to think about this crucial passage in a woman's life. She argues that, far from being "a marker that means This Way to the End," menopause is better seen as "the gateway to a second adulthood." Sheehy realized that "I belong to a generation of pioneer women. It is up to us to explore the new territory of unmapped decades over fifty. And to do it with honesty, elan, and a sense of adventure."

For more information, readers can contact the following organizations:

North American Menopause Society c/o University Hospital Department of Ob/Gyn 2074 Abington Road Cleveland, Ohio 44106

The National Osteoporosis Foundation 2100 M Street, NW Suite 602, Dept. V.F.

Washington, D.C. 20037

Editor in chief