‘Sexopause’: What happens to women’s sexual desire during menopause

In 2024, middle-aged women’s sexuality has taken centerstage in the movie industry. Various projects feature mature leads having adventures with much younger men, a formula the world is more accustomed to seeing in reverse, with older men often in the driver’s seat of such May-December tales. Fall brings with it even more releases along these lines, like Babygirl, an erotic thriller in which Nicole Kidman plays a successful CEO who embarks on a secret affair with her young intern. In I Want Your Sex, Olivia Wilde brings to life an artist who turns a fresh-faced man into her sexual muse. Such films are far from the first in which mature women have delivered sexual content to the big screen, but one of the scenes in Babygirl, in which Kidman masturbates after having sex with her partner, stands out for the way it spotlights the workings of post-youth feminine desire. The actress herself has acknowledged that, though sex scenes have always formed part of her career, she’s never acted in a role quite as revealing. Such steps forward when it comes to cinematic narrative are important because, says Laura Cámara, a gynecologist and obstetrician, sexologist and expert in sexual and reproductive health, “sexuality and pleasure are related to potency, youth and many times, fertility. After all of that, it seems that women no longer have the right to be sexual or desirable or to feel desire. We have a lot of work to do.”

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