Tattoo, haircut, nose-piercing: I may be a menopause cliche, but I’m telling the world it’s my body now

‘I wanted to feel pain whose moment and method I’d chosen.’ Photograph: RyanJLane/Getty Images

I’m sitting at a tiny desk in a tiny, one-woman nail salon in a tiny Blue Mountains town. Mel is holding my hands in hers, running her thumbs critically over my fingernails. Linda is sitting to one side of us, waiting for her treatment. She’s just been to have her hair done to get rid of the grey.

I had my nose pierced a month or so ago, consciously (self-consciously) opposing the march of age, putting a ring in my 55-year-old nose as a way of saying, well, this is my body now. Or something. It came from the same urge that drove me to get a tattoo and cut off my hair. And it came with the same awareness that these are classic cliches of menopause.