Alessia Marcuzzi breaks menopause taboo, saying she felt ashamed and less desirable

First public account of perimenopause

Alessia Marcuzzi has spoken publicly about menopause for the first time in a personal video posted on Instagram and reported by Italian outlets from 14 October 2026. The television presenter, who is 53 according to most of the coverage, says she entered perimenopause at 47, the stage before menopause that she calls the worst part of the process. Il Messaggero gives 46 as the age at which her perimenopause began, so the outlets do not agree on that detail. She admits she had not informed herself enough beforehand and felt unprepared as her body changed.

Your body changes, your hormones start going a bit crazy, and you don't know what is happening because you are not prepared.

Shame at work

She stresses the shame above all else, and says she knows many women feel the same reluctance to admit they are in menopause. At work, where she appeared on camera, colleagues teased her and asked whether she was going through menopause whenever she forgot something, according to her account in Fanpage and Tgcom24. She describes feeling less of a woman, less sexy on screen and less desired, and says she kept the stage largely to herself for a long time. Her account of those years places the strain in her professional life as much as in her private one.

I used to walk around with sanitary pads in my bag.

Hiding it from partners

She extends the point to other women, saying many hide menopause from their husbands and pretend to still have a monthly period so they do not have to tell them. She says the pretence is driven by the wish to still feel female. The thought makes her angry now, and she presents the concealment as one of the main obstacles to talking openly about the change.

A former husband and a new word

Her former husband stood by her during that difficult stretch, she says, and she describes the moment the menopause was confirmed as a kind of liberation. Tgcom24 reports that she married Paolo Calabresi Marconi in December 2014 near London and that the couple announced their separation in September 2022, after almost eight years of marriage. She prefers the Japanese term konenki, which Adnkronos frames as a sort of second spring, and the English phrase In Bloom.

Let's not call it a loss, but a re-flowering. I would like none of us ever to feel less.

In the video she describes women in this phase as more aware, more direct, more confident and more curious about new things. Rai News reports that the message was shared ahead of World Menopause Day.