'They have just kept growing, many, many sizes.'
Salma Hayek is getting candid about experiencing menopause. The 54-year-old actress appears on the latest episode of Red Table Talk, streaming on Facebook Watch on Wednesday, and talks about her uncomfortable initial visit to the doctor.
When asked by Jada Pinkett Smith's mom, Adrianne Banfield-Norris, if she's currently experiencing menopause symptoms, Hayek replies, "Oh my god, yes." The Eternals star says she's actually been experiencing symptoms since her mid-40s. According to the Mayo Clinic, menopause is the time that marks the end of one's menstrual cycles and can happen in your 40s or 50s, but the average age is 51 in the United States. Symptoms can include hot flashes as well as emotional symptoms that can lower your energy and affect your emotional health.
"I had to take a test," Hayek shares. "And the questions were terrifying. They were asking me things like, 'Are your ears growing and there's hair coming out of them? Are you growing a mustache and a beard? Are you easily irritable? Are you crying for no reason? Are you gaining a lot of weight really fast that doesn't go away no matter what you do? Are you shrinking?'"
"And then they ask you, 'Is your vagina dry?'" she continues, as both Pinkett Smith and her daughter, Willow Smith, are visibly shocked. "And then I thought to myself, it doesn't matter if you have hair coming out of your ears and nose and a mustache and a beard, and you're shrinking, and you're gaining weight, and you're getting big, and you're in a bad mood all day, but crying at the same time. Nobody's coming near your vagina! Nobody's gonna be coming near that thing! Makes no difference!"
Hayek also reveals that her breasts started growing significantly once she hit menopause.
"For some women they get smaller, but there are some women that when you gain weight, your boobs grow," she explains, noting that her breasts also got bigger after childbirth. "... In some cases in menopause, they grow again, and I just happen to be one of those women that it happened in every single step -- when I gain weight, when I got pregnant, and when I'm in menopause. A lot of people say that I had breast augmentation. I don't blame them. My boobs were smaller, so was the rest of my body. They have just kept growing, many, many sizes."
The actress says she has experienced health issues as a result.
"And my back has been really suffering from it," she says. "And not a lot of people talk about this."
Later, 49-year-old Pinkett Smith notes she's turning 50 this year and jokes that menopause is probably why she's crying all the time. But Hayek, who's been a long-time good friend of Pinkett Smith, gives her some comforting words.
"You know why you're crying all the time, Jada? You are only crying all the time because you have so much to be grateful for," Hayek says. "And gratitude can move you to tears. As you grow older, also, you feel things deeper. We let ourselves be more sensitive because we don't feel less threatened. As you get stronger, I think you get the luxury of letting yourself feel everything."
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