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This article reports on a qualitative social constructionist analysis that aims to examine the ways in which menopause and women's bodies are represented in self-help texts. In particular, we aim to compare texts with a more traditional ‘medical’ approach and others taking a more ‘woman-centred’ perspective. Four diverse self-help books on menopause and HRT available in England were analysed to examine the ways in which women, menopause and midlife were portrayed, and to investigate the construction of notions of knowledge, expertise and responsibility. The selected texts were published between 1992 and 1996 and covered a range of perspectives, including medical, alternative and feminist. Results showed that menopause was constructed as a ‘deficiency disease’ in all four texts, although in three of the texts this ‘disease’ discourse was counterposed by the simultaneous use of a ‘menopause as …