The conversation around menopause is changing. More women are speaking up about their personal experiences and symptoms, a trend that is profoundly important to actress, model, and former The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Garcelle Beauvais. Despite knowing that menopause is a natural part of aging, she admits she still didn’t feel prepared when the time came.
“I was definitely not prepared. I remember I was at a fitting, and I started feeling hot. I wasn’t sure what was going on,” Beauvais tells BlackDoctor.
Like many, she grew up in a Black household where health issues and medical history were rarely discussed—a cycle she aims to shift by sharing her own story.
“I want to start with this generation and the next one and let people know that it’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with it,” Beauvais adds.
Many women live in silence and endure the stigma surrounding aging, leading to shock when symptoms seemingly appear out of nowhere.
“I wasn’t prepared for how unexpectedly they can come on. I thought maybe it’s a certain time of day, maybe depending on what I’m doing, but I realized that has nothing to do with it; it can happen anytime, anywhere … I felt like it was stopping me from doing the things that I like to do,” she explains.
Searching for ways to manage her hot flashes, Beauvais turned to her doctor for answers.
This experience is something Barbara Dehn, NP—a nationally renowned TV health expert known as “Nurse Barb”—sees frequently in her practice.
“To Garcelle’s point earlier, I think so many women look in the mirror and they’re like … I feel good, I look good, what is this?’ So many times we think, ‘I just wore too many sweaters’ or ‘maybe the blankets are too much,’” she says. “We start to have these feelings of warmth in our face, our neck, our chest, or intense feelings of heat with sweating. And as Garcelle said, they can stop you in your tracks, so they’re super disruptive.”
Together, Beauvais and Nurse Barb are partnering with Bayer Women’s Health to bring this vital conversation to the forefront, with the goal of reducing the stigma and shame that many menopausal women face.
“I think that so many times women have been told, ‘Don’t complain. It’s your biology,’” Nurse Barb adds. “And what’s nice—which is one of the things I love about working with Garcelle on this campaign—is, let’s bring it out of the shadows. Yeah, everyone’s experience is different, but we can all benefit when we have someone we can relate to, like Garcelle saying, ‘Look, let’s talk about this. Let’s track our symptoms and then talk to our healthcare provider about it.’”
Beauvais takes the conversation a step further by highlighting how men can support the women in their lives.
“I was at my son’s basketball game, and one of the dads came up to me, who I know very well … and he was like, ‘My wife is going through it … has that happened to you?’ And I said, ‘Yes, it has.’ Because sometimes you feel like it’s only happening to you when you’re not talking about it … Here was a man asking about his wife, I thought, ‘Okay, so maybe the conversations are getting out there, maybe we can talk about it.’ If a man can feel comfortable coming to me, then the conversations—we’ve got to keep them going,” Beauvais shares.
Beauvais and Nurse Barb also want women to know that they do not have to suffer in silence. There are several treatment options available. However, finding the right treatment path requires an open dialogue with a healthcare provider.
“I think a lot of women don’t know that there are treatment options available. And the biggest misconception that I hear is that ‘one size fits all’—it doesn’t. That’s why it’s so important for women to track their symptoms and then talk to their own healthcare provider and work together on a treatment plan that works for them,” Nurse Barb notes.
Beauvais reinforces the importance of tracking symptoms and arriving at a doctor’s appointments with a prepared list of questions. She also advises dressing in layers to stay comfortable should hot flashes strike suddenly.
“You never know where it’s going to hit you. It could be at lunch with my girlfriends or on the sidelines watching basketball [or] volleyball with my kids,” she says, adding that she keeps a portable fan on hand. “It’s really managing it as much as you can and knowing that there are different options out there.”
In addition to her advocacy work, Beauvais is passionate about bringing authentic representation to her acting roles. In her Lifetime film Terry McMillan Presents: Tempted by Love and its recent sequel, Terry McMillan Presents: Tempted 2 Love, the actress highlighted the realities of aging, noting that menopause and body aches are part of the natural process of getting older.
“My character had menopause, and I thought it was really important, because that’s real life. And it was important, again, not to put shame into it, [but] putting it into a character that women can relate to, and there was a funny moment of another woman in a scene having a hot flash, and we talked about it. And I think those things are really important … to keep talking about it and learning how to manage it. Like Nurse Barb said, not all are created equal, so someone’s hot flash may be more severe than yours, so it’s managing it for yourself, like with anything else,” the 59-year-old shares.
Ultimately, Beauvais hopes women learn to see the privilege in aging.
“The alternative is not. We’re living longer now. We’re healthier, we’re working, we’re doing things differently. So part of doing things differently is being able to have conversations that we didn’t have before,” she says.
Nurse Barb agrees, noting that women are inherently strong.
“We deal with a lot,” she notes. “Sometimes we feel like, ‘I didn’t get the memo. Am I doing something wrong here? Why is my biology betraying me?’ But it’s not, it’s a natural part of aging. So being part of this campaign to raise awareness helps all women feel like, ‘Okay, I can relate to Garcelle,’ and if she’s able to talk about this as this amazing, inspirational woman, I can also talk about this with my friends, with my healthcare provider … There are alternatives that we can consider to help us get through the day.”
In short, this collaboration is helping women understand that they are not alone.
“If we can talk about relationships and purses and shoes and all that fun stuff, why can’t we talk about preventive things to help you ease moderate to severe hot flashes due to menopause, whatever else that you’re going through? I think it’s important to feel that you’re not alone,” Beauvais explains.
Looking ahead, Nurse Barb has plans to increase menopause awareness through global health projects in East Africa and by engaging women in the United States who may face cultural barriers to discussing their symptoms. She highlights the campaign with Beauvais as a “springboard” for these conversations, emphasizing that normalizing these discussions helps women feel supported and less isolated.
Beauvais is also continuing her philanthropic efforts while focusing on her professional projects, including the upcoming third and final season of the Netflix series Survival of the Thickest.
“It’s been a great, fun ride. Michelle Buteau created this project, and she’s been amazing about it. I’ve never seen in my entire career, women-led camera people—so it was really exciting, having a woman DP, and it’s just nice that we are sort of crashing the glass ceiling, if you will, and doing things differently now,” she concludes.
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