When cancer treatments changed her body forever, Catherine Guthrie had to figure out how to feel feminine—inside and out.
Fashion was the last thing on my mind when, at age 38, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and chose to have a double mastectomy. My priority was minimizing the surgical strain on my body; ultimately, I opted not to pursue reconstruction. The struggle with how to dress this new torso of mine came later.
I loved my breasts. They were perfect plums. Highlighting their shape, their curve—and even offering tasteful glimpses of them now and then—was part of the deep current of pleasure I took in inhabiting a woman’s body.
And yet, growing up Catholic in Kentucky, I'd been taught that emotions were to be stuffed and bodies were to be covered. While some seventh-grade girls got to celebrate their budding breasts with triumphant fittings at fancy department stores, my mother handed me two white cotton triangles bound by a tangle of elastic, and that was that. I treated my breasts as I’d been taught to, burying them beneath elephantine sweaters in my teens and behind moth-eaten cardigans in my 20s.
I loved my breasts. They were perfect plums. Highlighting their shape, their curve—and even offering tasteful glimpses of them now and then—was part of the deep current of pleasure I took in inhabiting a woman’s body.
And yet, growing up Catholic in Kentucky, I'd been taught that emotions were to be stuffed and bodies were to be covered. While some seventh-grade girls got to celebrate their budding breasts with triumphant fittings at fancy department stores, my mother handed me two white cotton triangles bound by a tangle of elastic, and that was that. I treated my breasts as I’d been taught to, burying them beneath elephantine sweaters in my teens and behind moth-eaten cardigans in my 20s.
No comments:
Post a Comment