"I'm still hot, it just comes in flashes now."

That bumper sticker is another piece of mounting evidence proving that women, between the night sweats and the hot flashes, are talking and bonding and laughing over menopause like never before.

"Menopause signals the beginning of the next phase," said Leila Nagamine, who keeps her sense of humor by asking to be referred to in print as "queen muddah" (her spelling) of the Na Huapala chapter of the Red Hat Society.

"You don't have time to waste, so you might as well have a great time, surround yourself with women who feel and think like you. If you see naysayers, run as quickly as possible in the opposite direction."

Nagamine and about 20 of her red-hatted cohorts surrounded themselves with like-minded women just last month, during a matinee performance of "Menopause: The Musical," which played at the Hawai'i Theatre. Over dinner after the show, the group laughed about jokes that struck close to home.

"Everything we saw in that play, we could identify with," Nagamine said.

In the closing scene, women were invited to join the actors on stage, celebrating not just "The Change," but the changes they'd undergone in the course of the 90-minute production.

"We all ended up dancing on stage with the performers," Nagamine said. "We have no shame."

It's not uncommon these days to see women talking openly on stage, TV and even in films about menopause. The word itself was a punchline in "Something's Gotta Give," when Jack Nicholson whispered to Diane Keaton during a makeout scene "What about birth control?"

And just this season, "New Adventures of Old Christine" had a funny take on Christine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) borrowing hormone pills from gal pal Barb (Wanda Sykes).

Hawai'i women agree with the likes of Roseanne Barr, who was quoted in the New York Times last year as saying, "Humor is a great way to dull the jagged edges of menopause. Humor makes everything that's big, smaller. You can first recognize it, then you name and then you manage it."

Honolulu psychologist Mitzi Gold calls this "an exciting time."

"Boomers have always done things differently, broken taboos," she said. "This is a taboo whose time has come."

For her part, Nagamine said she feels about 42, though her birth certificate puts her at 60.

"It's a great age ... when you think of the alternative," she said.

BONDING EXPERIENCE

Women are forging bonds over the experience of this life passage, talking over intimate details of menopause in a way they hadn't since they were in their childbearing years — even if they don't all share the same symptoms.

Shirley Cavanaugh, a volunteer at Hawai'i Theatre, was among the lucky ones. Like one character in the musical, she didn't have a single hot flash. ("I hate you" was the theatrical reply.) Still, she can identify with the emotional bonds of her generation's women.

"Women are feeling empowered," she said. "It's empowerment that you're on to a different phase of life."

And less embarrassed. Back in the days before "The Vagina Monologues," she said, "it was 'the M word' or 'the V word.' "

"It's beyond the initials, now," said Cavanaugh, who puts her age as "39 and holding," but adds she's "well past" menopause. "People are just more open."

She enjoyed seeing the reactions of the mostly female audience during the run of the show: "What it showed me was everybody had different experiences, but you have that bond. ... I think what it's doing in a way is creating a sisterhood. I think that's why it's resonated so much."

Women are embracing that sisterhood — and all it entails.

"They didn't talk about it in my mother's day," said Michele Lesperance, 53, who works at Kaiser Permanente on O'ahu.

Today's women can draw inspiration from current role models, she said. Besides stars like Susan Sarandon, still stunning at 61, Lesperance counts among her acquaintance many retired women — "all beautiful, elegant, accomplished women."

FINDING ACCEPTANCE

Ultimately, passing through menopause requires acceptance of a new state, and of the aging process.

"That's OK with me," Lesperance said — because she finds a peace that more than compensates.

She adds, however: "I really do believe I am more beautiful now. ... Somebody carded me about a week ago! I almost wanted to lean over the counter and kiss the person."

Psychologist Gold notes that women today are claiming their bodies by exercising more, refusing to surrender to illnesses and staying in touch with their health.

"My mother's generation wasn't into exercise," Gold recalled. "Housework and gardening was exercise. We have the option of a different lifestyle."

What used to be called the crone stage — an uninviting term, she admits — has taken a whole new turn.

"Look at it as wisdom and experience," Gold said. "... If you have been successful in all stages, it's a powerful time."

And a time for re-orienting.

Nagamine knows that when some women lose their reproductive functions, "there's a sense of great loss."

"This is who we are as women, we're the childbearing part," she said. "Bearing children was what they were destined to do. When that's gone ... they tend to get a wistfulness."

To fill their hearts, they can turn to each other: The 10-year-old Red Hat Society (redhat society.com) was started to encourage fun and friendship, "but in our particular chapter, we've noticed a lot else goes on."

These women come together to help each other through the difficult times that aging can bring, such as loss of friends, loss of spouses, etc.

"You learn to value life," she said. "We're not just out there in red hats and purple dresses and acting silly, we have really personal relationships."

And if that means more openness about menopause and aging in general, Nagamine is all for it:

"It means we deal with it with more humor. Which is wonderful, don't you think?"