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“Red Table Talk” just released a new episode with Oscar-nominated actress Salma Hayek. The actress joined hosts Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith, and Adrienne “Gammy” Banfield-Norris on Wednesday, June 23, for an intimate and revealing conversation about motherhood, menopause, and marriage.
The Mexican actress just premeried in theathers Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, a movie about the world’s most lethal odd couple. In the film, Salma Hayek plays Sonia Kincaid, the wife of hitman Darius Kincaid. A 54-year-old brave, beautiful and witty woman kicking some butts. “[The character] was conceived as maybe a girl in her 40s. But the truth is that I said, ‘Why? Let’s let’s make it a woman in her 50s,’” Hayek reveals.
“And I think we should make her about her having to do all this action while she’s going through menopause,” she adds. “We had to convince some people, but they’re like, ‘do we have to say the word?’ and I’m like,’ it doesn’t matter about words, is that we go through it.’”
The “Red Table Talk” hosts said how interesting is that menopause is considered a “problem” rather than something normal every women experience. “There is a very important message behind it because what we’re saying here is that there are no expiration dates for women,” Salma said.
“That has to go, because you can kick ass at any age,” the actress continued. “You can dream at any age, you can be romantic, at any age, we have the right to be loved for who we are at the place that we are, we‘re not just here to make babies or to baby the man. We’re not just here to service everyone around us.”
According to the movie star, many people think that “when the kids go away and you hit that age, it’s almost like expiration date for the eggs, that means, expiration date for you as a woman.” Salma, whose age is 55, said that even if she looks or feel older than her age “she would still kick ass.”
When asked if she is experiencing any of the symptoms of menopause, the star admitted that she has been dealing with it for years. “I been for a long time,” she said. “ I think it was [in] my mid 40s. I had to take a test. 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 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?’” the actress explained.
According to Salma the scary questions continued to the point when she got asked if her vagina was dry. “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. If you are shrinking, and you’re getting big, and you’re in a bad mood all day but crying at the same time. Nobody’s coming near you!” she joked.
However, Hayek went ahead and explained about the changes she experienced and nobody asked or told her about. “I will told you what they didn’t [asked] you. ‘Are your boobs growing’?
“Do boobs grow during menopause?” Jada asks.
“Yes, the boobs grow a lot. For some women, they get smaller, but there are some women, that when you gain weight, your boobs grow,” Salma continued. “Another women when [they] have children, and you breastfeed your boobs grow, and they don‘t go back down. 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— but they just have kept growing.”
“Many many sizes, and my back has been really suffering from it,” she said. “And not a lot of people talk about this.”
Salma also said she has had mood swings. “I have gone through those periods, maybe I still am but you gotta kind of notice and take a deep breath and say, ‘okay, it‘ll pass.’ You gotta hold it together. And also the hot flashes are not fun.”
During the episode Jada also revealed that Hayek is one of the inspirations behind their successful Facebook Watch series and that Salma’s wise words helped her through the most difficult time in her life. “I was going through that really difficult time and you just took me under your wing you just schooled me on so much and you shared your testimony with me,” she told Salma.
“I gotta say Jada you live inside of me every day,” Salma revealed. “I am so proud of your beautiful family, and I‘m so proud of you and I’m so proud of what you’re doing in the world. And something about you makes me fall in love with life.”
The new episode of “Red Table Talk” is now available on Facebook Watch.