(P)MGDS

Rietlanden Women’s Office
Jacob van Lennepstraat, Amsterdam

Web Design: Johanna Ehde
Web Development: Fallon Does

(P)MGDS is funded by the Stimuleringsfonds.

Conditions for Work — The Common World of Women, Adrienne Rich, 1977.
Collective Type and Noise Design, Andy G. Vidal and Johanna Ehde, 2019–.
En liten skara äro vi : en studie av typografer vid 1900-talets första decennier, Susanne Lundin, 1992.
Look Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging and Ageism, Barbara Macdonald and Cynthia Rich, 1991.
Motherhood, Sheila Heti, 2018.
Old age isn't calm, See Red Women's Workshop, 1978.
Out of Time: The Pleasures and the Perils of Ageing, Lynne Segal, 2012.
Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-girl, Tiqqun, 2001.
Sisters, Lovers, and Monsters: A Feminist Utopian Design Approach to Menopause Wellness, lecture by Shaowen Bardzell, 2019.
small white monkeys: On self-expression, Self-help and Shame, Sophie Collins, 2017.
The Middlepause: On Turning Fifty, Marina Benjamin, 2016.
The Woman Destroyed, Simone de Beauvoir, 1967.
To Become Two, Alex Martinis Roe, 2018.
Unseen Hands– Women Printers, Binders, and Book-Designers, exhibition material found at Princeton University Library, Graphic Arts Collection
Vrouwen in de vormgeving in Nederland 1880-1940, Marjan Groot, 2007.
Vuurvrouw in de Overgang, Facebook Group.

This is the online archive of (Post)Menopausal Graphic Design Strategies – a project initiated by Amsterdam based graphic designer Johanna Ehde. The project's main objective is to gain practical knowledge into how to develop and maintain a life-long graphic design practice while considering the issues of sexist ageism, and women’s health.

Studies suggest that even though hormonal changes after menopause produce similar symptoms in many women, cultural differences still shape how people experience this stage of life. In other words, with a decrease in social stigma, the "symptoms" may lessen.

It is important to underline that this project is not an attempt at trying to “make use” of menopause. It rejects individualistic wellness-thinking and the pressure to maintain a positive attitude. The word menopause is positioned as a counter-word to the often youth-centric, vital, ‘snappy’ language connected to both health and graphic design.

(P)MGDS
The Middlepause
Anger and Rage
Complaints
The Sick Woman
Vitality in the Designer
Legacy in Typography
The Image of a Designer
Vulnerability in Collaboration
Out of Time
Quotes
Like an onion
Shame
The Woman Destroyed
More like a rupture
Conspiracy of Silence
Ageism
They Will Never Sell Vaginal Dryness
Humans and Whales
Menopause is Not an Artefact of Modernity
The Young-Girl is not a Gendered Concept
All that is left is the killing of time
Feminine Forever
Hormones
PMGDS Diary
Menopause and Racism
Look Me in the Eye
The sense of the self as meat
Cry Till I Die
Typesetting
Live in the layers
The Selling of Old Age
Fiction

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“I feel I can embody femininity more now, than before. Or my idea of femininity at least.” Video still from Cry Till I Die, Johanna Ehde, 2019.
The age of discretion, The Woman Destroyed, Simone de Beauvoir, 1967.
“As we age, changing year on year, we also retain, in one manifestation or another, traces of all the selves we have been, creating a type of temporal vertigo and rendering us psychically, in one sense, all ages and no age. 'All ages and no age' is an expression once used by the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott to describe the wayward temporality of psychic life, writing of his sense of the multiple ages he could detect in those patients once arriving to lie on the couch at his clinic in Hampstead in London.' Thus the older we are the more we encounter the world through complex layerings of identity, attempting to negotiate the shifting present while grappling with the disconcerting images of the old thrust so intrusively upon us. 'Live in the layers, / not on the litter', the North American poet Stanley Kunitz wrote in one of his beautiful poems penned in his seventies.”

Out of Time: The Pleasures and the Perils of Ageing, Lynne Segal, 2012.
1

Now, as in the 19th century, women are managing the symptoms of being female. Then: cliterectomy and leeches on the cervix. Now: dandelion tea, aerobics and mild spices. Hormonal treatments. Paradoxically both cure and cause for the disease of Woman. Sick healthy bodies to capitalise on. Sick bodies that aren’t really allowed to be sick nor allowed to be healthy.

May 2019 (P)MGDS Diary Entry
“I never had a problem with menopause. I just had a problem with men.”

The response from a friend's mother when asked about her experience with menopause.
Nelly and Tine ten Have at work. Image from Vrouwen in de vormgeving in Nederland 1880-1940, Marjan Groot, 2007.
“Medicine’s prime contribution to sexist ideology has been to describe women as sick, and as potentially sickening to men. Of course, medicine did not invent sexism. The view that women are “sick,” or defective versions of men, is as old as Eden. In the traditions of Western thought, man represents wholeness, strength, and health. Woman is a “misbegotten male,” weak and incomplete. Since Hippocrates bewailed women’s “perpetual infirmities,” medicine has only echoed the prevailing male sentiment: it has treated pregnancy and menopause as diseases, menstruation as a chronic disorder, childbirth as a surgical event. At the same times woman’s “weakness” has never barred her from heavy labor; her “instability” has never disqualified her from total responsibility for child raising.”

Complaints and disorders, Barbara Ehrenreich, 1971.
1

I see four 50 something women sharing a bag of "tiny toblerones" at the gate. It is 6 AM. One wears a hoodie that reads Urban dreamer. One has an asymmetrical, short haircut with a huge, bright red highlight. A purse made from cow fur. Another wears a t-shirt with a print over the chest: Cliché. A camouflage bag, the latest sneakers. Red highlight is lowdly recording an audio message. Cliché proudly shows her business card to the others. They all approve. A small, pink perfume bottle in the shape of a bow is pulled out of the cow fur bag, accompanied by unashamed singing "There’s a possibility for a new love..."

December 2018 (P)MGDS Diary Entry
The age of discretion, The Woman Destroyed, Simone de Beauvoir, 1967.
Britt Dohsé and Birgitta Westhed infiltrates the men-only ski race “Vasaloppet” in 1978.
A Typografic Discourse, Jane Grabhorn, 1937. Originally published as part of the volume Bookmaking on the Distaff Side, reprinted for the W[omen's] G[raphic] C[enter] open house, Mar. 28th 1982.
I have desires too. From (P)MGDS Diary. Set in (P)MGDS Typeface (in progress).
The Middlepause, Marina Benjamin, 2016.
Spare Rib Issue 154, 1985
“Today, the evidence is all around us that youth is bonded with the patriarchy in the enslavement of the older woman. There would, in fact, be no youth culture without the powerless older woman. There can be no leisure elite consuming class unless it is off the back of someone. This is not true of men; older men still have power, power to be president, power to be Walter Cronkite and power to marry younger women. Men are not the servants of youth; older women are.”

Look Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging and Ageism, Barbara Macdonald and Cynthia Rich, 1991.
“We may be a small bunch, but oh so powerful and rich.”

The typographer is defined by an unusual self-esteem. The production of scripture has always been special and associated with mystery. Through written characters it was made possible to preserve and convey memories, experiences and knowledge. In many cultures carvings as well as letters have been seen as loaded with divine force, and therefore Only allowed to be handled by clergymen who became the link between divinity and humanity. Knowing the written expression of a language and even mastering this art was certainly a means of "conquering the world.”

Freely translated from En liten skara äro vi… en studie av typographer vid 1900-talets första decennier, Susanne Lundin, 1992.*
Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-girl, Tiqqun, 2001.
The Middlepause, Marina Benjamin, 2016.
“Shame is paradoxical: a desire for self-negation — a complete abnegation of the ego — that makes itself felt in every nerve, every brain cell and synapse that signals, paradoxically, the presence of a self. In this way, shame can be fatal.”

small white monkeys: On self-expression, Self-help and Shame, Sophie Collins, 2017
Old age isn't calm, poster by the See Red Women's Workshop, 1978.
Sophie Verrijn Stuart at work. Image from Vrouwen in de vormgeving in Nederland 1880-1940, Marjan Groot, 2007.
Fré Cohen (1903), Amsterdam based artist and graphic designer, at work.
“Am 53 (54) on Monday and am pretty much headlong into it. Two and a half years ago I started with some of the Peri symptoms though was still having periods and as my job is pretty demanding, decided instantly to see if I could go on HRT. Did and loved it. Only issue were the migraines. 7 months ago I tapered off and decided to just ride it out and go through it. My migraines are still horrific. They are actually worse. They are up to 4/7 days per week-which is sh*t. I am popping triptans like sweets. I am on topamax to try and prevent them to no avail. My crappy doctor has told me to keep a food diary 🙄 ( I gave up sugar and carbs pretty much completely two years ago) and don’t drink alcohol or smoke -basically I have zero enjoyment 🤣. I take a cocktail of “herbal” and vitamin drugs -feverfew, q10, magnesium, calcium, vit c and d, sage, black cohosh and St. John’s wort ( that’s to stop me punching someone if I can see through the tears ). I know my migraines are linked to my hormones. My periods never came back so I’m guessing I’m probably menopausal but can guarantee I “officially “ will be in September. I feel like crap. I cry constantly, I am an emotional roller coaster , I can’t bring simple words to mind and sleep is a distant memory. And the hot flushes 🤬. I would go back on HRT in a heartbeat but for the migraines which I need to get rid off. So for that reason and that reason only, I’m going to ride it out. But I feel dreadful pretty much every day. My moods are all over. Has anyone found anything to help with their mood swings? And what dosage? I think I’d feel better if I could see light at the end of the tunnel with an end date. This thing effing sucks. There. Finished”

Post from Menopause Reddit forum. (Published with permission from author).
“The sense of the self as meat, as the heap of an organ variously filled with ovaries or flanked by balls, is the bash from which emerge the aspiration and finally the failure of the Young-Girl to give herself form, or at the very least to simulate one. This feeling is not merely a lived consequence of the aberratios of Western metaphysics—which wants the formless to precede form, brought to it from outside—it is also what market domination must perpetuate at all cost, and which it constantly produces by rendering all bodies equivalent, by degenerating forms-of-life, by continually imposing an undifferentiating confusion. The loss of contact with the self, the crushing of all intimacy with the self, which makes the sense of self meat—these form the condition *sine quo non* for readopting the techniques of the self that the Empire offers for consumption. *The depth of penetration of this consumer junk can be read in the intensity of the feeling the self as meat.* ”

Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-girl, Tiqqun, 2001.
“Once we have reached certain age, it's hard to be reconciled to the fact that people are always going to be impatient with us. In the past, I was never aware of the existence and meaning of gestures such as rapidly giving assent, avoiding eye contact, and repeating ‘yes, yes, yes’ like clockwork. Or checking the time, or rubbing one's nose — these days I fully understand this entire performance for expressing the simple phrase: ‘Give me a break, you old bag.’ I have often wondered whether a strapping, handsome young man would be treated like that if he were to say the same things as I do? Or a buxom brunette?”

From p.32 Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk, 2009.
“There is also — still — a shock and a delight in seeing female experiences named, and both the establishment of women's networks and the naming of these experiences contribute to the consciousness-raising that can combat the silence and the dampening of the self that pervade trauma. Indeed, it is in looking at other women that I feel I am able to see myself most clearly...”

small white monkeys: On self-expression, Self-help and Shame, Sophie Collins, 2017
“Women are born with pain built in”
Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, 2019.
The Monologue, The Woman Destroyed, Simone de Beauvoir, 1967.
The Middlepause, Marina Benjamin, 2016.
From A Typografic Discourse, originally published as part of the volume Bookmaking on the Distaff Side, Jane Grabhorn (Jumbo Press’s typographic laboratory), 1937.
I feel like my heart is broken. From (P)MGDS Diary. Set in the (P)MGDS Typeface.
Graphic artist Debora Duyvis at work. Image from Vrouwen in de vormgeving in Nederland 1880-1940, Marjan Groot, 2007.
Privilege, Yvonne Rainer, 1990. “Privilege begins with a documentary style exploration of the taboo subject of menopause and goes on to explore the historical medicalisation and trivialisation of women as they move beyond their child bearing years. Clearly ageism is a factor in this, but Privilege doesn't take on a pat victim mentality in it's exploration, rather widening it's gaze to consider the many competing forms of discrimination that exist in our society.” http://www.ubu.com/film/rainer_privilege.html
“Time is always ticking for women. Whereas men, apparently, live in a timeless realm. In the dimension of men, there is no time—just space. Imagine living in the realm of space, not time! You put your dick into spaces, and the bigger your dick, the cozier the space. If you have a very big dick, then space—and life—must be very cozy indeed. Imagine having a very small dick—how vast and unknowable the universe must be to the small-dicked man! But if your dick is the size of most of what you encounter, nothing could be very threatening at all. For women, the problem is different. A fourteen-year-old girl has so much time to be raped and have babies that she is like the greatest Midas. The time-span of a woman's life is about thirty years. Apparently, during these thirty years—fourteen to forty-four—everything must be done. She must find a man, make babies, start and accelerate her career, avoid diseases, and collect enough money in a private account so that her husband can't gamble their life's savings away. Thirty years is not enough time to live a whole life! It's not enough time to do all of everything.”

Motherhood, Sheila Heti, 2018.
Look Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging and Ageism, Barbara Macdonald and Cynthia Rich, 1991.
A note on the Typography in Girls Like Us #12, set in the typeface Menopause, Johanna Ehde, 2020.
“It’s funny. You see I’m not only old, I also have colour. And I feel that in my work that is probably more of an issue”
Video still from Cry Till I Die, Johanna Ehde, 2019.
“...It is a rapid and catastrophic onslaught in which alarming changes bubble forth, unstoppable. What is more, these changes are enacted not around you, but on your very person. Written on the body. As indelible as ink. Somewhat surprisingly, there are still very few written accounts of what it feels like to be or to become middle aged. Back in 1970, when Simone de Beauvoir broke ground by writing with scholarly seriousness and emotional candour about the process of ageing and society's marginalisation of the elderly, she talked of the 'conspiracy of silence' surrounding the subject. Four and a half decades on, it is midlife that seems now to be the hush-hush affair. Menopause in particular is still largely undiscussed (except as a joke, which only proves how little our culture wishes to engage with it), to the point where legions of women are not even sure about what happens to their own bodies in menopause, where its causes lie, how long its symptoms last, and most especially what they can expect from life on the other side.”

The Middlepause, Marina Benjamin, 2016.
Spare Rib Issue 154, 1985
Women Setting Type at a Monotype Machine at the Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1911. Image from Unseen Hands—Women Printers, Binders, and Book-Designers, 2002.
The Middlepause, Marina Benjamin, 2016.
“As we were changing we found we were frequently feeling angry. This surprised us and embarrassed us. We had grown up feeling that we needed to love everyone and be loved by everyone. If we got angry with someone or they with us, we felt in some sense that we were failures. There were many ways we had learned to cover up our anger. Many have accused us et being shrill. Our mood is far more complex. Our critics hear only the anger, and anger separated from, real issues is a distortion. The anger that is in us is a starting point for creative change and growth.”

small white monkeys: On self-expression, Self-help and Shame, Sophie Collins, 2017
Screenshot of (P)MGDS typeface in progress.
“...While the ReSTAGE researchers didn’t find ethnic differences in the two phases categorizing the menopausal transition, others are zeroing in on symptom differences among ethnic groups with the aim of improving health-care delivery. In Freeman’s sample, for instance, African-American women were more likely than white women to report hot flashes, aches and depression during the transition. Similarly, an ongoing longitudinal study of 3,302 African-American, Japanese-American, Chinese-American and Hispanic women funded by the National Institutes of Health, called the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation found that African- American women and Hispanic women reported more hot flashes and night sweats than the other groups, while Japanese-American and Chinese-American women reported fewer hot flashes but more body aches.

That said, African-American women had more positive attitudes toward the menopause than the four other groups. In community interviews, the team gleaned possible reasons why: The African-American women said they’d experienced much worse difficulties than menopause — such as racism — and reported spending a lot of time with older female relatives, who gave them a more realistic view of the transition.”

Mapping menopause, Tori DeAngelis, 2010.
“Because it is resistant to being put into language, shame becomes restless and mutable in description. In Elizabeth Strout's story collection Anything Is Possible, shame is depicted both as a sausage skin and as a needle. It is internal and external — something that encases the subject in a pearly film, rendering her movements slow and jagged, as well as a sharp object, one that can pierce the subject's body and get lodged there, in her hest, where it will sit next to her heart like a hairball. Shame can also exist independently of our bodies — it needn't physically touch us. Selima Hill has shame as a white balloon, and Nuar Alsadir as a dog. Both dog and balloon require us to animate them, to keep them alive, to give them a degree of credence: we must feed and walk and touch them, we must blow them up with some effort in order to change their object status from passive to active.”

small white monkeys: On self-expression, Self-help and Shame, Sophie Collins, 2017.
The age of discretion, The Woman Destroyed, Simone de Beauvoir, 1967.
Martina “Tine” Baanders was an llustrator, graphic designer, typographer, lithographer, and teacher. Image from Vrouwen in de vormgeving in Nederland 1880-1940, Marjan Groot, 2007.
The Middlepause, Marina Benjamin, 2016.
Sisters, Lovers, and Monsters: A Feminist Utopian Design Approach to Menopause Wellness, lecture by Shaowen Bardzell.
“In Lyric Shame Riley writes of her own distress: 'my own aim is to finally convert “shame” into a bearable sadness. When the pressure of shame itself can become a productive force, the lyric poem might sometimes just be one way of enacting and demonstrating this conversion...'. Ultimately, Riley believes in shame as a sadness that can be sung. I feel my own shame hardening into an anger that will power me indefinitely. Ana Mendieta, another artist, believed that all art comes out of sublimated rage — 'rage and displacement'. I am angry because I have been ashamed for that of which I ought not to have been made to feel ashamed, and, as I now know, anger is a battery. From an interview with poet Lisa Robertson:

I think that anger indeed can become productive. Especially if one gives oneself the space for reflection too. And certainly anger can aerate the debilitating sadness that is another response to the rampant institutional misogyny that structures much public and commercial discourse.”

small white monkeys: On self-expression, Self-help and Shame, Sophie Collins, 2017
Willemina Polenaar at work. Image from Vrouwen in de vormgeving in Nederland 1880-1940, Marjan Groot, 2007.

“I never had a problem with menopause. I just had a problem with men.”

“Shame is paradoxical: a desire for self-negation — a complete abnegation of the ego — that makes itself felt in every nerve, every brain cell and synapse that signals, paradoxically, the presence of a self. In this way, shame can be fatal.”