Part 2: Margaret Cho on the freedom of menopause

"Many things rely on me for life, and I'm OK with that. Even though I'm not a mother, I am definitely an earth angel."

“The best thing I could have done is to leave a legacy of ‘I can do this.’”

This is part 2 of the Margaret Cho interview. Part 1 is here.

By Laurie White • Photos by Sergio Garcia, Kaitlin Parry, and Albert Sanchez

I first picked up a Margaret Cho book from the back room of the Borders bookstore where I worked in the early aughts, and loved her immediately. I got a chance to meet her at a conference party in NYC in 2012, and she was so warm and nice in that weird scene that I came out to her, in some mumbled approximation of "Thank you so much for being open about who you are, because it's really helped me a lot …mumble mumble… I'm queer too, BYE!" 

Even then, I didn’t know many out women in my age range. Her representation and willingness to tackle identity and human rights to simply exist meant a lot, no matter how poorly I mumbled it, and how little I understood then where I was headed.

And who in the hell else is going to understand public blurting of important private information like Margaret? 

As our recent conversation continued, Cho reflected on shifts in perception around not having kids, being a mentor who loves intergenerational collaborations, and loving who she is, more than ever. 

I saw symmetry, and so much growth, between that brief bar talk a decade ago, and us chatting now, me with my little rescue dog barking at nothing out my sliding-glass door, while her tiny chihuahua licked her face in her L.A. backyard. 

As she said multiple times, and I choose to agree: “This is the best part.”

Laurie: I relate to you as a person with a rich history of community and activism, and who didn't have her own children. I’m 52 and I have not, but it was something that I was always assuming and hoped would happen. I wasn't an intentionally child-free person. Can you speak to how that has evolved for you? 

Margaret Cho: I think my life would've been very different if I had children. I ultimately decided not to because I just don't want to love anybody that much, and that's a hard choice. I see that happen with my friends and family and their kids and I'm like, ‘that doesn't look like fun.’ I didn't prioritize it. I didn't prioritize being that open with my heart.

I think people look at that as being really selfish, and I don't really care. I think that's great. I think, “why not be selfish? Why not enjoy that?” But yeah, I think of it as a really important, also feminist, idea. We're not just here for breeding. There's no reason we have to think that's the only reason to be alive. I think that's why people put so much of a negative spin on menopause, because it's the end of reproductive viability. But it's the beginning of life, not underneath that quite authoritarian regime of monthly cycles where you have a period, and you have to deal with all of the emotions that come with it. To be free of it is phenomenal. I have been pretty lucky; I had really no symptoms of anything negative throughout my menopause. No real hot flashes, no depression, no irritability, nothing like that. No insomnia. I didn't have that effect.