Finally Becoming a 'Model Citizen'

I was the only flat-chested model among the group of fellow survivors of all types of cancers, as well as loved ones modeling in tribute to loved ones who succumbed to the disease.

BY Carolyn Choate

PUBLISHED May 23, 2018

Carolyn Choate recently retired from the TV production industry to write full-time. Diagnosed at 45 with stage 3 estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer in 2003, she underwent two radical mastectomies - in 2003 and 2012 - without reconstruction. Carolyn credits Angela Brodie, Ph.D., and her discovery of the aromatase inhibitor, for saving her life and those of millions of women globally. In the summer of 2017, Carolyn and her older daughter kayaked from New Hampshire to Baltimore in tribute to Dr. Brodie. When not informing others about Dr. Brodie and the "living flat" movement, Carolyn enjoys gardening, cooking and RVing with her family and dog.

Carolyn Choate - PHOTO BY Harry Umen

You know the line, “Don’t get even, get even better?” I have, and I did! After I graduated college way back in 1980, during the nation’s worse recession, I could not find a job in the advertising biz as I had hoped, so I worked instead in custom drapery and furniture sales at a high-end department store in Burlington, Vermont, waiting for my big break.

One January day, there was a flurry of excitement in the lunch room to match the flurry of snow outside. The store management announced that they were auditioning store personnel – women and men – for a spectacular, first-of-its-kind spring fashion show they were staging in late February at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts just down the street – a  fabulous, Art Deco vaudeville theater and movie house built in 1930 and recently renovated and restored to its original grandeur. At 5’5” and 118 pounds, not to mention a boatload of confidence and charisma to go with my knockout bod, I knew I would be a shoe-in.

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