MENOPAUSE DOESN’T KILL A WOMAN

Menopause Doesn’t Kill a Woman is a painting that presents a narrative scene of three women at different stages in their life: youth, middle, and old age. At the time of its production, Mobbs had been reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Woman Destroyed, which ultimately inspired this painting. The book is a collection of three novellas outlining the experience of threewomen facing different crises: ageing, loneliness, and falling out of love. Mobbs was curious about whether these crises were still relevant to wom en today, and whether they were issues specific to women. Beauvoir’s work reflects various existential anxieties that have been persistent in the lives of women—chief of which is the question of ageing and its correlated loss of social value. Through conversations with her mother and her own reflections, Mobbs worked through these complex ideas in her painting. The three figures are painted with their backs to the viewer, subtly and quietly refusing the various imposing gazes that are often thrust upon the bodies of women. However, this defiance is not overt nor is it necessarily repellant; the figures are represented with generosity, and thus the women in this painting are allowed to simply exist in their bodies and their environment in peace.