It feels unfair that this phase of life now is really hitting us when we are our most productive, our most needed, we are at the most pressure that we will ever experience. The hardest thing about it was feeling alone. I thought I was losing my mind. So, having a peer group, having my friends kind of catch up to me was really helpful. Samantha Bee is a comedian, writer, and the creator of How to Survive Menopause, a live show that's selling out theaters because she says the things the medical system never bothered to tell By the time Sabrina Carpenter enters it's going to be so much easier for her.
It's going to be almost cute. It's going to be like very normalized, and that's the work of this generation of women. Hey there. Welcome back to the Tamsen Show. So, one of the hardest things I think about menopause is to act like everything is perfectly normal, like you've got it all together.
Imagine having to do that while you're on live TV. Today's guest that you're about to hear from gets it, and she's turned the very thing that we're all going through into a sold-out stage show. I'm talking about comedian Samantha Bee. You know her from Daily Show and Full Frontal. Well, right now she is touring the country with her show, How to Survive Menopause.
She walks out on stage at night and says all the words we've been too embarrassed to say out loud. She really gets it. But, she said to get there, it took a long time, a long time for her to stop crying and start being able to laugh about it. Let's get into it. So good to see you.
So good to see you. I'm excited for this conversation. I feel like I don't need notes. I don't need anything. Not at all.
I'm just here to laugh with you. It feels like from the outside, one day you woke up and were like, "I'm doing a show about menopause." But, that's not what it was. I could imagine it feeling that way, but that is definitely not what it was. It was definitely an evolution cuz at first, actually, I think when I, I mean, I don't know what your personal experience of it was, but for me, it hit me like I just did not know what was going on with myself for a really long time. Like I mean year like years, really.
To where it became normal almost to feel that way. and I actually thought that, you know how everyone blames you for being very stressed out? Like everyone's like, "Oh, you know, just really stressed. You just need to really like do a little self-care." And so, until I went to my doctor and I was like, "Why don't I ever sleep? Like am I Lady Macbeth? Like what am I doing to myself to create this scenario in which I see shadow people jumping behind the sofa?
What did I do wrong to cause this? What is How did I also cause this problem?" And she was like, "I think you are probably just in perimenopause." So, that was it was No one talked about it. Yeah, what year was that? What year were say that that was around 2017. And what were the symptoms that you were doing or what were you seeing?
What were you feeling? I never slept. I was really like my moods would swing They like the variability in my moods was just I mean it was I did have a really hard job. I was on top like So, there was a lot of pressure, for sure. But I really had trouble kind of like regulating myself.
I would really get And then suppressing all of that so that I could actually manage a team of people, do my work, enjoy my work. was full frontal, right? You were all in. All in. All in. All in.
Handle my kids. They were much younger, like be a good mom. They were just I had a lot of responsibilities and regulating my own emotions in that was nearly impossible. So, there was just like a lot of And my my periods went crazy. I, you know, my hair started falling out in clumps.
And again, of course, I naturally blamed myself. And then So, actually having someone very reasonably say, "I think you might be in perimenopause." was like Oh, right. Yeah, it's it's like a sigh of relief almost after you get through the initial shock of it. And not that it was like yeah, not that it was like the panacea for everything. It didn't make anything particularly better, but it was really nice to know that I wasn't actually that my head wasn't going to fall off my shoulders and this is just part of a very normal process no matter what job you do.
And that it was really hard for me to talk about for a really long time cuz I held a big show lots of employees but pretty much I was the oldest person on staff by quite a lot. Oh, did you feel that? Did you feel felt it. I really really felt it. That wasn't a bad experience, but there was literally no one for me to talk to about what I was experiencing.
All my friends are just a touch younger than me. So I had kind of no one to talk to. I hadn't didn't really have a peer group who was going through it. My mom never really talked about it. I just felt very very alone.
I was even very shy. I've been married to my husband. We're very happily married. We've been together for I don't know almost 30 years is how long we've been together. Thank you.
And I was even shy to talk to him about it. Because you felt like made you feel old me feel old. I was like what have I become undesirable to him? Like and we're very stable. Do you know what I And so kind of taking all of that on board the older I got or the more familiar I got with what I what was going on in me the easier it got to talk about it and I thought I started to reflect on like I say things I say hard things all the time.
I've been doing that forever. That is my job to say that's my superpower to be to be unashamed and say truths and opinions. I'm very opinionated. And if I'm wilting in the face of this subject matter, boy, it must be really hard for other people who are not so accustomed to saying their truth out loud to talk about this. And so, I kind of just started to develop material about it, honestly.
And the easier it got for me, the more that information flowed. It was hard to write about it at first without crying like a baby. But to hear you say that, but I believe Because you when you write your material, you have to be really raw honest first before it gets funny. Because you're you know, everybody's haha the hot the hot flashes, but after you know, what where do you go for that? Later along in the history of Full Frontal, I decided to do an episode about menopause, about perimenopause and menopause.
And that was it still felt so risky in my bones, like in my DNA. I was like, can I even talk about this? Can I I'm ready to make jokes about it. And when we did that episode, I found that I really was not ready to make jokes about it. Cuz I really struggled to make that episode.
Like it's pretty challenging. You've got all these writers, they're incredible, they're so funny, and they're so much younger, and you're like, well, what about this? And what about this? And then they end up writing a bunch of great jokes about vaginal dryness, and I'm like, I can't say these cuz I'm going to cry. I'm going to cry.
This is really hard. And so, now I can talk about it, but it took a really long time. And so Are you suffering? Suffering, confused, or just like trying to be a normal person with my body changing. Like trying to just trying to understand this new phase of life.
So, you know, some people have a super easy time with it. I don't know too many of those people. I'm sure they definitely exist. That's awesome. They might not come to the show.
Bless you for that. That's great. But for the most part, all of us are kind of if you're in the public eye, you are always concerned about body image and how you're projecting. It's all of And I think and it and it goes all ways. Like I've talked now over time and you were you were so in the public eye and also in a the public eye in a very environment when we're talking about politics for the most part, right?
And in TV for the most part, so how many years did you go through that? I don't think I I don't think I'm really on the other side yet. I don't think I like I'm still Listen, I know it's like I know that menopause is, you know, it's like the one-year anniversary of your last period, but I've not gotten there yet. I still like I get right up to that year mark and then I'll just We're going to celebrate when you do. We're going to have a little pause party.
Don't worry. I've got you. We'll get you cupcakes. We'll get you I don't know whatever you want. So, let me ask you this.
When that episode aired, first of all, how did it come about? Did you suggest it? Yeah. Yeah, because I was really grappling with it and because everything kind of comes I can't remember what the total catalyst was for that episode, but it was certainly because of like pretty much self-generated. Yeah.
Yeah. And then um what was the reaction to I think people really welcomed it. I I mean, listen, we perimenopausal and menopausal women, we hunger for this content. I mean, we want to know. And you know, in the earlier days, I'm talking it's crazy to be talking about like less than 10 years ago when absolutely no one would say the word perimenopause out loud like in any context whatsoever.
It's kind of it's gained so much momentum, but right in the heart of that people were like, "Tell me everything. What is going on?" There was just sort of a lack of or the information was very anodine. It was really really boring. we're layers. Medical doll, a little infographic of a woman just like patting her. Yes, silly.
Sweats, okay. All right, so Full Frontal ended, you could have done anything you wanted to You decided as part of this next chapter that How to Survive Menopause was going to be part of your story. Sure. Yes, well, you know, it's not always easy to figure out what you're going to do next when something changes like that. Worst question ever, right?
What are you going to do now? What are you going to do now? But I did take I actually did give myself a lot of time to figure that out. I did I did see the writing on the wall for a long enough to go, okay, there is a next chapter. Like, what do I have left to say?
I felt in some ways like I've said all I really wanted to say. I don't know what more I'm going to say about the Trump administration. I mean, the world has certainly changed and that was like a different time completely, but I've said everything I wanted to say in that space. So, what is the actual What stones have I left unturned? What do I think I have left to contribute to this to the discourse.
And this really evolved into the subject matter that I felt like this is a contribution to the discourse. This is something that I would like to say because I think I have a fresh voice in I think that it's important for me to use my voice because it's something I feel very passionately about destigmatizing. Like, I feel very very committed to untethering us from the shame of this. Because it's stupid. It's really stupid.
It's so stupid. It's like 50% of the population of the Earth. Like, if you're if you've been born, you are connected to someone who experienced menopause and therefore like the less we talk about these things, the more shame is allowed to like you know, just uh let's that kind of percolate and people it's not like that everyone wants to talk about it, but I think it'll be nicer for my children in the future to have heard these words and have open conversation modeled and so I'm using my voice for that because what else is there really? I couldn't agree more. How many kids do you have?
I have three. Three kids and you have a boy a son, I have a son, yeah, a son and two So what do they think about mom talking about menopause? I mean my son is definitely like can you can you go one day without saying menopause in this household and I'm like well not really because it's paying for your college tuition when you attend college in the fall. But you know, I don't I don't care. I'm like I think it's very good for him and he's it's great.
He'll be a we should all be so we should all be so evolved. It's like I I do say in my show. I'm like you know, by the time Sabrina Carpenter enters and she will enter it. It's going to be so much easier for her. It's going to be so much easier for her.
It's going to be almost cute. It's going to be like very normalized and that's the work of this generation of women. Boy, we have always talked about things that the generations before us just like put a lid on and that is very helpful to all the people who come after us. I couldn't agree more. Now if your audience is it mostly women?
I mean I I can't even What? It's not. It's a lot of men? Very very evenly balanced. Yeah, it's actually quite an evolved crowd if I And that's what I thought too.
I was like oh this will be mostly Listen, I love the women in my audience no question, but they come with their partners. They come with like it's a very widely varied demographic which is I think it's great. How do the men They love it. It's a funny Listen, it's a funny show. Like they're they're there for whatever reasons that are in their heart and that's great.
But everybody really just wants to laugh and it's a funny show. It's genuinely. How did you get from crying about the material to making it feel good to flow to making you laugh? That's just like a It takes a little time. It takes a little time.
It takes just a little bit of distance from maybe the most acute point in in you know, in time. And to be writing to like I think at first I'm very stream of consciousness consciousness-y. So I'll sit and just I will word vomit. And then sometimes and I when I look back on actually like the earliest stuff that I wrote, it really was too much. Like it's not jokes.
What was What was I'm curious. I'm always curious how the writing process happens. It It's just a little harder. Like the edges are harder. You know what I mean?
It wouldn't be fun to watch someone perform that material on the stage. Like it would be fine. It would be It would just suit some audiences, but it wouldn't be fun for me to perform. Right. You'd be suffering every night.
I don't want to I don't want to I want to be able to make I want to be able to be light with it and to be able to be light with it I have to like I just have to wrestle with it a lot. So it's just a process of like wrestle wrestle wrestle, feel good about this, be more confident in that. You know, it just takes It just took me a little time a little bit more time than maybe other subject matter actually. Because it's so personal. It's so personal.
So personal. And you're going up there dealing with each one of those a different symptom every every night possibly. 100%. It's so it's vulnerable. It's a little more vulnerable. So here's what I always think about when I go see a Broadway show or something and I look at somebody who is my age or whatever 10 years younger.
I'm like how are they remembering everything now? I have such brain fog. no. Never. No. I have a little I keep a little monitor.
I do a little I have a little monitor with me. And you know what? I want to say this. I'm going to say this right now. I don't give a damn.
More people use monitors than you might think. Like it's a big unchecked secret. Like I can name probably 20 people right now who use a monitor and you will never I feel so much better right now about Yeah. Yeah, we should all feel better and I actually think that that's a service that I provide. I'm like, I have to have it.
I don't actually need it. That's the crazy thing. I don't actually need it, but I also need it because if it wasn't there, I would Yeah, I have a monitor and a beta blocker. That's what I use. Yeah, I like need it in order to not need it.
It's a comfort. It's [snorts] a comfort to me to have it just in case everything falls apart because I walk into a room and I don't know where I am. I don't know why I walk in with total confidence and then I'm I like bombed into this room with purpose and it's gone. What if I do that on stage? You know, there's ways.
There's like tricks and tips and I wish actually everybody was a little more open about it because it would be very helpful for people to understand that no one's a magician. You know, Reba McEntire's got a monitor on her stage telling her the lyrics to a song she's been singing for 30 years. Can we stop pretending, please? I love you for that. That makes me feel really good.
I have a speech coming up and I'm like, "I got to memorize this." Don't even bother. You just give yourself the grace. You're going to do You're going to do such a better job if you have the material with you. It's still your material. Doesn't make any When you walk out there on the stage I have not been to the show in full disclosure because I want to come to the New York one.
How do you I have the feeling like people just see you walk out and just the name of the show is how to survive menopause. And so people are ready to start laughing. How do you They're just ready. They're just primed. They're just And you know what else is very important and I actually This is so silly.
It's such a subtle thing. I like my shows to be as early as possible and this serves my audience. This is an underserved audience. Why don't want to go to a show at 10:00 p.m.? I don't want to do that anymore.
I don't like it. If that's happening, if you make a restaurant reservation and it's at 9:00 p.m. I don't know if I want to go. I love you. I want to eat great food.
I'm going to be up all night digesting. Can we do things at a nice hour where we just feel great and we walk out and we can go home and we can all be in our beds by 9:15. I love that. try so hard to schedule my shows at 7:00 It's great. can just like get the hell out when it's over. Go home. Sometimes they do take place at 8:00 or 8:30 because based on the venue, that's fine.
They have their own needs, but in an ideal world, I'm doing a brunch show. In a less than ideal world, I'm doing like a 7:00 p.m., 7:30 and then whatever is needed, that's fine, too. But like I'm serving these people. They are ready to laugh and then go back to laying down and reading their I did it all day yesterday, so I'm like feeling it. I wish I was back doing it Why do you think we're so scared to talk about our vaginas?
We are scared to talk about them and if we're not scared to talk about them, the world will confirm for us that we should be scared to talk about them because I've talked about it on live television with like male co-hosts and they they have almost thrown up. Do you know what I mean? Like there's a visible They have a visible reaction to it and I'm like, well, I think that we just all need to be coached to say vagina like a little more often. We're all very confident talking about erectile dysfunction. making jokes about it even. We're just like you know, we're we have we make nice words for things.
We talk about it. We constantly see commercials for like men's sexual wellness and I think that is great. I don't not want that for men at all. I want that to exist and be robust and I want them to be their best selves. I just want us to have an equal share in that.
I want us to be able to start saying like vagina and vaginal dryness without shame or discomfort because it's real and you can actually like deal with it. But culturally um it's like a very forbidden. It's like a very disgusting to people and I'm like don't you haven't you ever met a woman and like you're the cringe your face you're making right now is hurting the women in your life. So like undo it. And it you listen, it's not just men.
It comes from women too. Like this is like What surprises you most about audience reaction and has it changed over the years? Cuz I have to imagine when you first went out with that show and we were talking about this before nobody wanted to hear the word menopause. Nobody knew what the hell perimenopause was. So that was just like a something that came up after.
But nobody wanted to hear that word menopause because it it meant you're a woman aging. Yes. That's what it meant. What are you seeing as a surprise and what people are laughing or looking for or laughing about now and that is What's really resonating for people now and it is just a catharsis to talk about it, to talk freely about it because I don't like I don't have the perspective of and I understand it. I really do.
I'm like we should be living our best lives, but I don't want to pretend that this is the best part of This isn't like the best my body has ever been, okay? Like it's just not. And I don't like to be asked to pretend that and I don't so I don't pretend. I'm not like making it I'm not trying to idealize it and I think that's really refreshing. It's really okay.
I like to go to the bottom of something so that I can feel normal. I just want to say like this sucks so much and here's the 20 reasons why and like my bras don't fit and my boobs are getting bigger and I can't wear button up shirts up the front anymore. Like what happened to these? Why are they growing? It's so unfair.
I hate it. They were fine the way they were. And I like to just hit all those uncomfortable notes so that we don't have to have this like in my show I don't want to have this like veneer that we're all supposed to be like the best part of ourselves. There are incredible aspects to aging. It is great but we are like culturally we were never allowed to do it.
We're never allowed to talk about it. It's very uncomfortable for everyone who people who are younger to even consider that that's the trajectory of their life. Like my 15 year old uses She uses the kind of face cream. Like she is doing anti-aging stuff. Like she's wearing my face creams.
I'm like is it so horrible to imagine you could be like me one day that you're already you're already slugging your face at night with like snail mucin so that you don't wizen like your mother? Okay. I don't even know where I was going. I've lost my train of thought. That's I think I have a monitor for that.
The what's resonating nowadays? What are because I feel like we're hearing it a little bit more, you know, TV show friends and neighbors. There was a whole episode about it. You know, it's being it's being put into shows and it's it's not just in whatever it was in the past, you know. Sex in the City had a one episode on it out of 600.
Out of 600, yes. I do feel like what is resonating right now is that people I'm I change the material as I go. Like I evolve it as I go and I do feel like people are really want to talk about the onslaught of products that are being thrown at us. Like capitalizing on menopause truly is the new gold rush and I like to talk about it in the show cuz I don't really have anything to sell. Like I'm not going to sell you a vagina cream that is going to cure all your problems.
It's called coconut oil. Like look into it. It's the main ingredient in everything everyone's trying to sell you on. You just go buy yourself a jar at Whole Foods. It's cheap.
I think that that is refreshing, too. I think people want to hear that it's for everyone and you don't know what to some of the we're we're served so much content now is very hard to like we kind of went from not talking about it ever and it just kind of putting a lid of shame on it to talking about it somewhat and that felt really right. And now we're talking about it so much and offering so many products in that realm that it almost feels to me like it's starting to take on the character of something that has a cure. Like oh, like if you experience any symptoms of you're doing it wrong. Like tell me another way in which I could be doing something wrong.
I'm doing menopause wrong now because I'm not like like a swampy sex beast. Like just Like can I live can I live? Can I be graceful? Can I have questions that don't have sometimes open-ended questions that don't have answers. Just because something's happening doesn't mean there needs to be a cure for it and I feel like we're accelerating into a new dimension in which we are just like refuting the aging process at all and we're sort of being asked to like reverse engineer our faces, our hairlines.
When I actually think that aging is fine it's fine. We're all going to do it. You want to find a way to make peace with it. To make peace with it. The more you struggle, the more you sweat it and struggle.
I'm not saying that we don't have to give up. Like understanding aging is not capitulation. But there is nothing that you can do about it and it doesn't matter who goes into the face skin on your head. You still look your age. You may look a great version or a different version of age, but you still look your age.
Like let's not kid ourselves. So I like to talk about that. I mean that's important to me. I feel like I'm in the public eye, too. It's like, oh, do I love my chin?
No, I really don't. I'm like, can I put a more turtleneck on? Like can I pull it over my I don't know. I would love to I'm excited about coming to see the show because I'm excited about that audience. There's such an energy in that audience, a feeling.
And I I I know it from giving, you know, speeches or and and that's a different way to do it with like women's health, but I can imagine with you they get to go, oh, thank god somebody understands me from another way cuz it it's hard and funny. And there was some funny stuff, but you've got to be able to get to the get to the funny part of it. do. You have to be able to laugh at your dry vagina. It's not going to stay dry forever. Like there's stuff you can do, but there is a moment in time where you're like, oh my god, all I think about are my genitals.
Like I can't get my work done. Like can I please I need a moment. What is happening? And you can you can solve for that, but it's a journey. Like it takes a little time.
You know, you got to figure out all your levels. And we can laugh about it because what are you going to do? You can't cry all the All the time. How do you survive How do you survive menopause? I survive it?
I have been surviving it by talking about it constantly, cuz it's It feels great. It feels so the the hardest thing about it was feeling alone. I thought it was me. I thought it was like me going crazy from all the pressure in my life. I thought I was losing my mind.
So, having a peer group, having my friends kind of catch up to me was really helpful. Speaking in front of people who are there with their peer group, that is the most tremendous. That is the greatest joy that I can feel. That's how I do it. There's a woman in the thick of it right now and is like, "Yeah, I hear you.
But, I just still can't get to that point. It's just so so difficult for me. And my algorithm is only menopause and perimenopause, which by the way, only perimenopause and menopause. I feel like that is not just us anymore. I feel like everybody is talking and posting about it. part of the conversation.
To be part of the conversation. So, I mean, it's like I definitely feel Well, I definitely feel, and this is This I think is actually very helpful, is to really go through your socials and search um being very choosy. You've got to You've got to scale it. You've got to prune. You got to prune your socials every once in a while.
And if someone feeds you a piece of misinformation, you need to unfollow them right away. Cast them out of your life, cuz if they feed you one thing that's not correct, they're going to feed you 25 more things in an effort to get you to buy some product. So, I I do a little scrub every once in a while. I got to do a scrub. I got to get rid of all the pants ads that I get for pants I don't want to wear, and I got to get rid of all the products for things I absolutely do not need, and all the supplements that I don't want that are like not tested and not well developed.
Absolutely eradicate all that stuff. I don't know how to suggest that we form a peer group, but you kind of know, it's your book club. It's like all the it's the people in your life. I think we have to learn to get better at saying hard things out loud. That's like the first That's the first step I do talk about.
I had to learn how to say hard things out loud. I, who says only hard things, had to learn how to say hard things out loud. And that's what you've been known for since I've known you. So for for you to have a hard time saying this out loud, I think about every other woman who maybe didn't have to voice some of those things and how difficult that must be. I think that's what always pulls at my heart.
Yeah, it pulls at my heart, too. Imagining kind of like you just kind of can end up at this like this terrible apex where you're like, "Whoa, what if your if you have a like a marriage isn't doing well or you're having discord at home, something's happening with your kids, your job is very high pressure, you have a million responsibilities." Like it's it feels unfair that this phase of life now is really hitting us when we are our most productive, our most needed, we are at the most pressure that we will ever experience. Where maybe sometimes we're the breadwinners, we are working so hard, juggling 10,000 things, kids' schedules, adolescent children, getting them into college. Like this is can really be a a tsunami for people. Yeah, it can.
You know, and I feel I really feel for that. I have a lot of compassion in my heart. We've got to give each other grace, my goodness. Well, I'm glad you're out there talking about this and making people laugh about it at the same time. What do you have people come up and say to you after the show?
I can't even imagine the the the laugh tears. They're just they're like it's people have a hunk they just want to laugh. They just want to laugh and I think generationally we don't get served as much content like we don't get served that much content that's really just for us. We get a lot of like byproduct content that's just like they love Housewives, right? They want to see Housewives behaving badly.
I mean, and sure there's definitely people who love that, but we can handle we can have content that's geared toward us. It is very specifically for my audience. It is for them and them alone. And I think that that feels Do you have younger women coming in, too? Yeah.
I love that. I had a 27-year-old stop me yesterday and she's like I'm listening to your content about menopause for my boss. And I was like, oh no, what's your boss doing? That you notice this is a problem. So, I said, okay, I'll send you a book.
Just She was 27 years old. I didn't even know the word. Yeah, no, I didn't either. I know I would just go into like the the Saks Fifth Avenue ladies lounge and be like, what is going on in here? There's so many What is that?
I feel like there's just a lot of hormones being shed in this room right now. I feel like I got to get out of here. It almost feels contagious. I know. And it's nice to just You can't catch a menopause from us.
Trust me. What's next for you? I'm writing a book. I'm working on various television products. Is it a menopause book?
No, not necessarily. There's There's a little bit in there, but not but not not Well, I'd love to have you back whenever you do. Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much. Thank you for what you do.
Oh, thank you. Wonderful. Where can people find you? samanthab.com, I guess, for tickets to my show. That's kind of a hub. Perfect.
Thank you.
