My overriding sense when reading JT's article was that she almost certainly hasn't taken HRT, and so comes from a specific standpoint.
I think she misunderstands the reasons for it: for her, it has become an elixir of youth, when in fact, as one commenter clearly put it, the truth is that many of us need to take it simply to feel functional again.
I'm also so very bloody tired of the old chestnut that women in older generations managed to cope without HRT, because it rides roughshod over so many variables, not least the fact that our physiology and our environment (which frequently overlap) have changed, and so medicine has had to change too.
Generally, journalists are people who are in the public eye, who write for publications that are in the public eye, about people in the public eye. They are already biased towards a view point that is fixated on how they and others are perceived. Most of us, however, are not, and our problems are far more practical: how to stop the aching, the rages, the flushes, the sleeplessness, the forgetfulness, the dryness, the itching, the loss of libido, the loss of muscular control in our pelvic floor, the increase in UTIs, in bowel problems - all of which are very real, and I'll be damned if I'm going to swap my HRT for a load of platitudes about "we all had to soldier through, so button it, please". Fuck that.