Sex education
Gillian Anderson is feeling distinguished. “I am,” she agrees, as she sits down with HELLO! at the launch for her drinks range G State’s charity partnership with Wellbeing of Women.
“Or now not it’s fascinating because I really feel treasure I’ve learned a lot from the characters that I’ve played over the years.”
From Special Agent Dana Scully in The X-Recordsdata to Stella Gibson in The Fall, Gillian has played a long list of empowered women. Now,the 55-year-customary star wants the women who have cherished her characters to really feel treasure they can really feel distinguished too.
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“I accept as true with women can be incredibly distinguished. I want other women of all ages, who have seemed up to the characters that I’ve played, to explore what it is about these characters that they actually want, and whether they can embrace some of these attributes that already exist in them. Optimistically then they can absorb them extra.”
This mission to empower women is something that’s been partly driven by one of Gillian’s most up-to-date roles as Dr Jean Milburn in Intercourse Education. “Women centric issues have always been important to me but since doing Intercourse Education, women’s health has been a topic that has been introduced to me reasonably a lot.”
“There are so many taboos, oddly, even in 2023, that are clean around discussion about women’s our bodies, about sex, about menopause.” Or now not it’s why the award-successful actress cares so powerful about the kind of sex education that young individuals are receiving in class.
“A real percentage of childhood out there aren’t really aren’t getting messaging that is valuable and purposeful for them in phrases of what protection to exercise.” Gillian has even seen that it isn’t always taught that the assorted developmental stages that women and boys battle via are all fully okay.
“There have to not be shame around it or judgement, or now not it’s always going to be icky. So why now not be brave and have these conversations?”
Even menopause, a significant stage currently experienced by approximately a third of the UK’s female population, is clean a taboo topic. Earlier this year UCL discovered that a staggering 90% of postmenopausal women were by no means taught about the menopause at school. In fact, over 60% only started purchasing for information about it once their symptoms had started. Gillian has similarly discovered that many women simply aren’t urged about menopause.
“I’m constantly struck by how many women of my age and youthful know very limited about menopause. Or now not it’s factual such a peculiar thing that in this day and age there isn’t extra out there that is accessible to women from a very young age.”
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“But also to young boys about what the other half of the population is going to be going via. It may cease up affecting them as successfully in one way or another because they have sisters and mothers. And we actually have partners that may or may now not be women.”
G State has teamed up with Wellbeing of Women, the only UK charity funding all of women’s reproductive and gynaecological health. It has helped power masses of key innovations in women’s health, from the exercise of ultrasound in pregnancy to helping establish the hyperlink between HPV and cervical cancer.
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HELLO! has also been partnered with the charity for the past two years, working together on our Menopause Workplace Pledge. With over 3,000 companies now signed up to put aside menopause on the HR agenda and to enhance menopausal women in the workplace, it’s been a large success.
For Gillian, finding a charity collaborator who may well abet her in her mission to break down taboos across all age teams was important.
“Or now not it’s important to me”, she notes. “We realised that G State’s audience has a large depraved section of women from these in their twenties to women in their eighties. And so we were attracted to finding a charity that did the same thing for women.”
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“Or now not it is now not factual about the research, or now not it’s the fact that they actually abet women and women’s needs, both their our bodies and their health, but also with sexual wellness. That’s a very important aspect of what we’re about.”
Gillian based the drinks brand when she realised at some stage in the pandemic that she consumed too many excessive-sugar caffeinated drinks. In G State, she discovered an alternative that wouldn’t only satisfy her cravings, but contain adaptogens and nootropics which are meant to enhance brain and cognitive performance.