Ok so I'm on a roll today, a bit frantic to be honest. I googled 'beautiful breasts' and got 87 700 000 hits. I googled 'beautiful breasts after breast cancer' and I got a surprisingly high number of hits
68 400 000 but when I looked at them, they did not show anything beautiful, just make up hints, reconstruction stories and general breast cancer sites. There were no beautiful pictures of breasts after breast cancer, at all.
There was, however, one site that I'd seen already on Facebook. This young woman had a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy because of breast cancer. A photographer took and posted these photos of her on Facebook and they were banned from FB in the end because they were topless photos.
There were also some silly trolls who posted cruel and nasty comments after the pictures, but you always get the crazies, don't you?
"Beth and Nadia’s message was that we have no idea what people are carrying around with them underneath all their layering and clothes. We have scars, we have flaws, we have insecurities — but every body is beautiful and tells its own story. "
Have a look.
here
I have various reactions to these photos
- I feel really really sorry for this girl, who is obviously young and beautiful, she must have gone through and be going through so much pain and distress
- she is going to need a lot of courage to get on with her life and do 'normal' stuff
- she already has a lot of courage for doing this
-what the hell am I moaning about when she's gone through this
- She looks great in the photo with her red dress on
- Her naked body looks ravaged and ugly
- I don't understand how the patronising platitudes of 'you are still beautiful' can be dished out like that, I really don't see that she is beautiful, this is not my idea of beautiful
- why do I think she is beautiful with her clothes on and not beautiful naked?
- what is beauty?
- I'm glad she posted the photos, I think she's brave to show herself
- maybe the photos will stop people thinking of breast cancer as this pink fluffy thing that means you just have to post the colour of your bra to 'raise awareness' for. Far too many women are 'aware' of this disease, we just need cures and better, more compassionate treatments that help us feel human again
Thanks Claire for posting this. I recently saw Beth's posts and story, and I like her pictures, but not because they are beautiful, but because she is brave to show her body and the ravages of illness. It also shows us how we've been conditioned to love the unattainable, photoshopped bodies that we are bombarded with on a daily basis. Which is sad, because life leaves all sorts of marks on our bodies.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.abeautifulbodyproject.com/
Thank you for that amazing, inspirational site! I hope one day I will feel able to look at my body in the mirror, and maybe even one day, I would very much like to love my body.
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