Understanding Perimenopause: A Recent Buzz

For many English-speaking women, navigating the internet can feel like a constant reminder of how their bodies or minds might be, somehow, less than perfect. A few years back, social media was buzzing with conversations around attention deficit disorder. Interestingly, between 2020 and 2022, the number of women aged 23 to 49 receiving a new diagnosis nearly doubled. And not too long ago, premenstrual syndrome was a hot topic, with algorithms favoring content explaining occasional emotional outbursts. Nowadays, perimenopause seems to be everywhere.

You might have noticed the headlines, such as “Perimenopause is having a millennial moment. Here are 7 ways to cope,” from The Washington Post. Or maybe you’ve caught the second season of Apple TV’s show Your Friends & Neighbors, where the lead character, Mel—played by Amanda Peet—is openly dealing with perimenopause. In the first season, she even keyed a car seemingly out of nowhere. Peet has publicly discussed her own experiences with perimenopause, humorously admitting, “God knows I’ve wanted to key a lot of cars in the last three years.” It seems like every celebrity interview with women in their forties or fifties requires some kind of revelation about their hormone changes. For instance, Drew Barrymore joked on CBS Mornings that upon learning about the length of perimenopause, she worried she wouldn’t manage it for a decade. Similarly, Katherine Heigl remarked to Business Insider that whoever thought women would go through perimenopause while raising teens deserves a strongly worded letter.

Simultaneously, there has been a surge of influencers discussing perimenopause, often with products to promote, leading to some online speculation about this sudden trend. The discussion has spilled over from social media into quirky shops selling items like fridge magnets proclaiming, “Perimenopause Is Hot.” You can even find T-shirts that say, “Perimenopause Made Me Do It!” My mom, who recently turned 48, started experiencing leg shaking at night a few years back. “It’s perimenopause,” she casually mentioned when I expressed my annoyance at her habit.

But what exactly is perimenopause—and why is there such a focus on it now?