Menopause Struggles
I was surprised by the narrow focus of Rebecca Mead’s article about menopause (“If You Can’t Stand the Heat,” March 10th). In reviewing several recent books and mentioning others, Mead writes about the symptoms of menopause, and then goes on to concentrate almost exclusively on hormone-replacement therapy for women in their fifties and sixties. Perhaps that is indicative of the limited cultural perception of menopause.
Last year, at the not so “crone” age of twenty-seven, I entered surgical menopause. Like many women, I am unable to supplement estrogen. Mead mentions only glancingly the women who might be ineligible for H.R.T.—and doesn’t mention at all those who are into menopause in their twenties, thirties, and early forties. She writes about the cancer risks of H.R.T. without mentioning the women who can’t take H.R.T. at all—for example, the millions of women in this country who have estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer. I wish that the piece had addressed some of the terror they face, and some of the solutions—such as progressive weight lifting, to fend off osteoporosis—that may offer them hope.
Samantha Cochran
Scottsdale, Ariz.
Cowboy Fluidity
Michael Cunningham, in his recent essay on Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain,” published in The New Yorker in 1997, refers to the main characters as gay (Takes, March 3rd). As a bisexual man, I find this description troubling, and emblematic of a broader issue: the constant erasure of bisexuality, even in stories where it is evident. The two cowboys, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, do not fit neatly into the category of “gay” or “straight.” Though their love affair clearly exists outside traditional heteronormative boundaries, the narrative leaves open the possibility that one or both of the men could be bisexual. This ambiguity is important—it reflects the complexity of human desire, the fluidity of sexuality, and the reality that bisexuality is not always visible or acknowledged.
Patrick McGrath
New York City
Double Vision
I was delighted to read Namwali Serpell’s brilliant piece on the New Literalism plaguing movies (Critic’s Notebook, March 8th). There is an additional potential explanation for this maddening phenomenon. I work in Hollywood as a film director, and it is now understood that many or most audiences are “second screening” when they watch a film. That is to say, they are engaged with their smartphones while watching and listening to the movie, whether they’re at home or (unfortunately for us) in a theatre. So everything in films has to be formulaic; the images and the dialogue now reinforce each other to such an absurd degree because audiences are distracted.
I fear that we will end up in an era when most mainstream American films are like “Teletubbies”—where the scenes playing on the creatures’ bellies are always shown twice—and we are treated like children. The recent movie “Challengers,” for example, requires viewers to pay attention to the story and the characters, as years pass and relationships shift; the same is true of “I Saw the TV Glow” and “Queer.” These masterly films did not receive any Oscar nominations, but they are blissfully free of wretched literalism as they seek to unsettle and engage us.
Alex McAulay
San Diego, Calif.
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