Naomi Watts blows up menopause myth with new social media platform

Naomi Watts is hoping to destigmatise menopause with a new social media platform “breaking down the societal shame attached to feminine life experience”.

Naomi Watts is leading the march of sexy high profile Australian actresses hoping to destigmatise menopause.

Watts is a founder of Stripes, a new platform which launched this month and claims to be building “midlife solidarity” and community (though also perhaps promote a yet to be revealed product line) while, Watts says, breaking down the societal shame long attached to the feminine change of life experience.

As Watts said on Instagram last week: “Creating @iam_stripes has been a labour of love.”

The 53-year-old actor revealed she entered menopause “earlier than I was prepared for”.

 “(It) sent me spinning!” the Penguin Bloom star said in a frank admission.

Naomi Watts opens up about her menopausal experience on new social media site @iam_stripes

“It’s just a natural phase of life that half the population will experience first hand and 100 per cent of the population will feel the effects of,” she says in a video promoting the new site.

Watts’ decision to speak openly about menopause stands in stark contrast to the approach adopted by Elle Macpherson, 58, who this column recently criticised for failing to say the word in marketing material promoting her product line of nutritional supplements designed to “relieve symptoms” of a female “journey”.

There is no such doubletalk from Watts.

Now we can only hope she can persuade her glamorous friends – from 55-year-old Nicole Kidman to 54-year-old Kylie Minogue, from 58-year-old singer Suze deMarchi to 50-year-old Selma Blair – to open up about their own menopause experiences and blow up the Hollywood myth that mature women aren’t sexy.