Making merry of menopause

The Judy Blumes of menopause are back.

Small Achievable Goals, the workplace comedy about menopause from creators, executive producers, writers and stars Jennifer Whalen and Meredith MacNeill (Baroness Von Sketch Show), returns to CBC tonight for a second season of boundary-pushing TV.

“It’s kind of like we’re always in labour,” Whalen jokes.

Season 1, which premièred last winter, put Whalen and MacNeill firmly in the menopause cultural zeitgeist. Here, finally, was a frank and funny coming-of-middle-age comedy, with relatable characters played by women roughly the same age — Whalen is 55, MacNeill is 50 — who weren’t making hackneyed open-freezer hot-flash jokes or wallpapering over reality with euphemisms.

And the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

“It’s so weird when you make a television show, because it’s just us in a room for a long time,” Whalen says. “So it was so nice to have women say that they felt seen. It was great to hear that people laughed and cried and did all the things that we wanted them to do.”

“Jenn and I like to create content that starts conversations, and I think on social media, seeing the other people be able to share their stories — or want to — about normalized pain, the IUD, period pain, all of that stuff, was so moving,” MacNeill adds.

And the glowing feedback hasn’t just been from women, either.

“I’m always surprised by how many men have come up to me and said that they really like it, and especially my character’s storyline, which deals with sexual dysfunction, and how many men were like, ‘Oh my god, thank you for opening this conversation,’” Whalen says.

Small Achievable Goals follows Julie Muldoon (Whalen) and Kris Fine (MacNeill), two very different women thrust together in a professional setting who end up becoming friends and the co-hosts of a podcast about menopause.

Together, they are riding a hormonal roller coaster while also trying to make an honest show about it.

A major arc for MacNeill’s character this season is mental health. In addition to uncontrolled (and unexplained) bleeding, Kris begins grappling with another symptom: debilitating anxiety.

“Did you know that 70 per cent of women are affected by mental health issues in menopause? And like, the fact that we’re not prepping for that, or that women don’t know, that is an avenue to explore,” MacNeill says.

“I think we normalize anxiety for women, especially middle-aged women. Life is a lot, so you’re constantly told by the medical system that’s just what it is to be a woman. So that’s where we push that story.”

Another area the pair wanted to explore this season is the ways in which the wellness industry has seized upon the current menopause moment. The supplements, the weighted vests, the conflicting information: they tackle it all.

“There was no research, nobody was interested. Now people are interested, and now it’s getting commercialized — and what does that mean?” Whalen says. “Our characters come down on different sides of it, and we tried to approach it as, nobody’s right and nobody’s wrong.

“Because it is a confusing amount of stuff that comes at you, especially if you can’t get a doctor, and if you’re struggling to get a care system in place, and you feel terrible and you’re looking for a miracle, I think it puts you in a very vulnerable position. We wanted to shine a light on that.”

Whalen also got into a vulnerable position for the season première. There’s an incredibly affecting scene in which Julie appraises her naked body in a full-length mirror. She starts out with a critical eye, zeroing in on her flaws.

But then she cautiously chooses kindness — for herself as she exists today, as well as for a photo of her past self.

It’s a scene Whalen says scared her deeply.

“In the Venn diagram that is Julie and Jenn, like, yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard. As you age, you struggle, especially being in a business where you have to look at yourself in an editing suite all the time and you see yourself from angles that you’re like, ‘Oh god. That’s what that looks like? Jesus,’” she says.

“So I wanted to talk about that because I have had that exact experience of looking back on pictures and being like, ‘Oh my god. I thought I was a monster and I’m cute.’ You get to an age where it’s like, if I don’t start accepting my body now, am I ever going to do it?”

Writing the scene — and then actually having to get naked in front of a crew to film it — was difficult, she says.

“I’m glad I did it, because I think sometimes you should lean into stuff that really scares you.”

“That scene with Julie still chokes me up,” MacNeill says. “Just witnessing that true moment of what working on self-love, and the reality of what self-love can look like at home, privately.”

That scene also feels like a balm at a time when invasive procedures and plastic surgery are becoming more normalized online, and women’s bodies are treated as fixer-uppers in constant need of renovation.

“Jenn and I always talk about this too in the room when we’re writing, like, who does that serve? Who does it to make women not like who they are and how they look? Doesn’t serve us,” MacNeill says.

“Like, we could collapse the market if we loved ourselves. I don’t want to put it all on women, because it’s put on us from the beginning of time. But it’s basically to make money off shame.

“But still, just because you know it doesn’t make it any easier. Everyone’s still battling the facelift.”

How amazing, then, to see a different way forward.

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