Balansreceptet: konsten att hantera hormoner i självhjälpslitteraturens hormonberättelser : [The Balance Recipe: The Art of Managing Menopause in Self-help Literature's Hormone stories]

• The balance recipe: the art of managing menopause in the hormone stories of self-help literature In recent years, menopause as a phase of transformation has received great media attention in a Swedish context. It is then not only specifically concerning the time when menstruation ceases – but about a longer period of time when female bodies undergo an adjustment with a focus on hormonal changes. In books such as Hormonstark (Hormone strong) (2020), Perimenopower (2018) and Livet med klimakteriet (Life with Menopause) (2020), the stressed reader in the middle of the career receives knowledge, tips, ideas and inspiring stories about how to deal with the fluctuating hormones that are said to affect the body during menopause. In this article, we start from these books with a poststructuralist feminist perspective on narratives and body control on the hormone stories of self-help literature. The aim is to explore how the literature represents women's menopause and hormonal bodies in a broader sense, and how women are encouraged to act in relation to this. The results show that hormone narratives may have feminist potential, but that they primarily make menopause an individual rather than structural matter. Further, they also reveal a close resemblance between the hormonal narratives and a biocapitalist contemporary, with an aging female body as a lucrative threat.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Genusstudier (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Gender Studies (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Etnologi (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Ethnology (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Litteraturvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Literary Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

hormone narratives

self-help

menopause

body control

biocapitalism

hormonberättelser

självhjälp

klimakteriet

kroppskontroll

biokapitalism

genusvetenskap

gender studies

Ethnology

etnologi

Literature

litteraturvetenskap

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)