This week, blogs murmured about Fashion Week, an all-star gala for the iconic Our Bodies, Ourselves, important findings about menopause and blood pressure, and Tilda Swinton’s harrowing new film.

• As New York’s Fashion Week wraps up, Habitually Chic salutes the event’s creator, Eleanor Lambert, founder of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Click over to see what HC blogger Heather has pulled together in tribute to the woman Diane von Furstenberg eulogized as “an American legend, a visionary, a working woman, very pragmatic and always pushing the boundaries. Her contribution to American fashion is invaluable.”

• What are you up to next week? “Ready to party in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Our Bodies, Ourselves?” asks WVFC’s founding editor Christine at Our Bodies, Our Blog. If so, she adds, hie thyself next Thursday to a cabaret fundraiser at OBERON, the second stage of the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) in Cambridge, Mass. Included in its huge lineup are “poetry and spoken word by Lady Rose… acrobatics from Marci Diamond & Teresa Kochis of the Boston Circus Guild…” and “Rosie the Riveter-themed hula hooping by Little L and Lolli Hoops of the Boston Hoop Troop.” Click on the link above for tickets and/or more ways you can be part of this kickass birthday party.

• While we’re not yet done celebrating the Emmy-worthy TV work of last season, ComedyBeat gives us two reasons to look forward to the next, with new shows from Reba McEntire and Ellen DeGeneres! After all, “McEntire’s Reba was a fairly successful show for The WB. Reba went for more than a hundred episodes and five seasons there before moving to The CW for a thirteen-episode sixth and final season. A former executive producer of Reba, Kevin Abbott, will fill that role yet again in addition to writing the pilot… Others involved with the project include McEntire’s manager David Stewart (half of the ’80s pop-rock duo, Eurythmics).” Meanwhile, ComedyBeat learns from the Los Angeles Times that “Portia de Rossi and Ellen DeGeneres have cooked up a comedy about sisters with a contentious relationship, and NBC has nabbed it. The network reportedly made a “put pilot commitment” for the show, in which de Rossi will play one of the sisters.” We’ll have to wait to see a) who will play the TV sister to Ellen’s wife, and b) whether Dave Stewart can get his former partner, Annie Lennox, to guest on Reba’s new show.

• “Blood pressure? Mine shot up after menopause.” How many times have you heard that? Certainly we’ve spent quite a bit of time at WVFC on that commonly accepted fact, and the near-inevitable conclusion that menopause causes high blood pressure. At Flashfree, Liz Scherer tells us of new research questioning that conclusion in the wonderfully titled “Be Still, My Beating Heart.”  “The long-held theory that menopause acts as an accelerator and an equalizer has just been turned on its toes by a newly published study in the British Medical Journal,” Scherer exults. “The study authors say that clinical and epidemiological data that demonstrate that menopause is a key culprit are simply not there. Rather, they believe that women’s increase in deaths from heart disease can be attributed to a gradual decline of cells that act to repair and replenish our circulation.” To gender-blind aging processes, in other words.

• Women and Hollywood‘s Melissa Silverstein has been at the Toronto Film Festival, where she has found no shortage of women-directed films—despite, as she pointed out last week, the complete absence of such films in the New York Times overview of the festival.  One of the best, she writes, features WVFC BFF Tilda Swinton: “I woke up thinking about Tilda Swinton’s blank face from We Need to Talk About Kevin. It is amazing how much expressiveness there can be in a blank stare. The movie directed bravely by Lynne Ramsey is an adaptation of the Lionel Shriver novel of the same name. Like Ramsey, Shriver is not a shy artist and her book The Post-Birthday World is one of my all-time favorites.” The trailer below hints that the film’s not as fun as Swinton’s Orlando or I Am Love, but it feels like something on our must-see list.