Defining beauty

My friend S. is always sending me the most interesting material to think about.  Most recently she sent me an article about a mother who shaved her head to prove to her daughter that she didn't need her hair to be beautiful.  Her daughter is 4ish and into princesses like most other preschoolers, and seemed to hold the mother's hair in high esteem.  So the mother let the daughter cut it off, and then she shaved the hair down to the scalp.

A noble undertaking indeed!  What bravery and self-confidence did that mother require to execute such a daring sacrifice?

The event seemed to have the desired outcome, with the daughter proclaiming her love and admiration for the mother and the mother accepting her new bald beauty.  Her point was that it's what's on the inside that counts.

When I finished reading, I couldn't help but think what would have happened if the mother's noteworthy feature were her eyes rather than her hair?  Certainly she wouldn't have gouged them.  This train of thought vaguely reminded me of something religious...perhaps summed up as Catholic guilt and visualized with someone punishing themselves for being too virtuous?  These thoughts returned simply to, "What's wrong with having beautiful hair?"

Everyone has something beautiful about themselves.  Rather than reducing a feature that might be coveted, isn't it equally important to teach our children how to accept compliments with grace?  How to harbor our own personal strength and beauty with a bit of humility?  


S. and I have been talking a lot about beauty lately--how it is defined, what it means, and to whom.  She brought up a good point in that the mother who shaved her head is classically beautiful:  trim figure, symmetric face, pretty smile.  S. wonders if this woman would she have felt as comfortable going bald if she were overweight, had stickey-outey ears, or otherwise wasn't as outwardly beautiful.  


This in turn made me think of myself and my unibreast.  Would I be as comfortable walking around lopsided (as I do) if I weighed 50 more pounds, had a limp, or were 4'11"?  Is my perception of my level of beauty in line with that of society's, or are people that I meet thinking to themselves, "someone get that poor girl a boob"?  And when it comes to my daughters, do I do a good enough job acting beautiful despite my single breastedness so that they understand that it's what's on the inside that counts?  Or better still, are they learning that I am actually beautiful despite my external deformity?     


I believe that self-confidence goes a long way toward the beauty that one projects.  Beauty begins with the self, whether you're bald or otherwise.  Props to the mother who was brave enough to shave her head and more clearly reveal her inner beauty.  But it's okay to be outwardly beautiful, too, in your own unique way.        

Music to my mind and muscles

Months ago my friend Ainslie recommended yoga as a therapy to help both my mind and body recover.  I've never done yoga, and indeed I thought I would hate yoga because I am lanky and inflexible with relatively bad knees.  But I'm a new person now, highly divergent from who I was before cancer.  And as the weather turns, I'd like a mechanism to get out of the house and exercise.  Maybe I'd like to give yoga a try, once a week for five weeks?    

I found a yoga studio just downtown, within walking distance from our house.  It is a private business with only one instructor.  It thought that this would be a promising way to get into yoga, because if I'm going to hate yoga I don't want it to be because of a poor-quality experience.  I'd rather give myself a fair chance to like yoga by taking it from someone who Lives yoga.  And let me tell you, the instructor seems to Live yoga.  She is fantastic!

I've only attended one session thus far, but preliminarily I love yoga.  In just one session something under my scar popped and I have slightly increased range of motion.  It was wonderful to have some direction from the instructor in terms of pushing my body; I think I am a bit of physical coward when I am stretching by myself at home.  The direction revealed that I am not very strong in the right places, so it will be awhile before I get the hang of the breathing and the posing.  I definitely did a lot of quaking the first time.  I am greatly looking forward to getting strong in the right places!  And maybe I will gain back the inch of height that I lost as a result of two pregnancies.  Ainslie said that she gained an inch in height after only a few weeks of yoga.  I don't really need to gain an inch like Ainslie did (she is adorably petite), but if a girl's gonna be tall she may as well be 5'11" rather than 5'10".  At 5'11" I'll make better use of these enormous feet (aka stabilizers).

In addition to the physical aspect, yoga is a mental exercise in releasing stress and anxiety.  I tend not to carry much of either around with me, but I found that I enjoyed the mental yoga almost as much as the physical yoga.  It was relaxing.  More importantly, it was wonderful to have permission to think about nothing for a whole hour.  Rarely do I give myself permission to think about nothing:  if it's not the kids it's the science, if it's not the science it's the chores, if it's not the chores it's the blog, and so on.  Turns out that I enjoy thinking about nothing.

My yoga instructor also sprinkles the nothingness with pleasant nuggets of thoughts.  I scurried to write this particular thought down as soon as yoga was over:

"...letting go of the illusion or dream that you're perfect, and settling into your natural state, which is imperfection..."

I am certain that this comment came from the universe, ensuring me that I was in the right place.  I have been thinking a lot about the natural state of imperfection lately, primarily in the context of physical beauty.  When I had two breasts I did not think that suffered the illusion that I was perfect, but the fair bit of mental energy I have spent settling into my new natural state of having one breast indicates otherwise.  Perhaps I have a leg up on my fellow yoga-ers because I am actively engaged with settling into my imperfection.  And perhaps yoga will help me to settle more comfortably.          

Revealing

Martha totally called me out in the comments to the previous post.  She said that she would like to see a picture of the new haircut with, well, more of the haircut in the picture.  This is not an unreasonable request.  I did not post awesome pictures of the haircut because the ones we took at the salon make me feel ridiculous.  Also, now you'll know what my hair is Supposed to look like, although I have yet to achieve this level of stylishness with my own two hands.  But at this point, what do I have to lose?

One thing of which I was previously ignorant is the issue of styling your hair around the glasses stem.  I used to just put on my glasses.  Oh no no no no, not anymore.  My stylist taught me how to use the comb to release the hair from the clutch of the stem, laying much of it gracefully over the top while leaving just enough underneath.  Ah, short hair, will I ever pass all of your lessons? 

While we are here, I will divulge that before my Herceptin therapy yesterday I got fitted for a prosthesis.  I figured even if I never wear it, I may as well get fitted for it before I lose the prescription.  The fitting was not unlike trying on shoes except that instead of taking off a shoe, I took off my shirt.  Then the nurse who works in the Cancer Center Boutique helped me chose the correct prosthesis and try on countless bras.  Choosing the prosthesis was the easy part because we just matched it to the existing breast.  But I had to try on countless bras to find the right one for the right breast, the left prosthesis, and my 30-year-old self.  See, the prosthesis requires a special bra that has a pocket in it.  I guess you can't just set the prosthesis in a normal bra or it might just leap out of there.  Because of this need for prosthesis security, these bras all seemed gigantic to me, and a far cry from my old bras.  But whatever.  It's not like I had cleavage or anything interesting before.  Besides, I'm rather enjoying the no-bra lifestyle.      

The prosthesis itself is made of silicone and is kind of cool; I will post pictures when it comes in.  The nurse had to special order it because she didn't have any small enough for me.  I always joked that my cup size was a lower-case A...turns out I wasn't far off the mark.  I am indeed less than an A, but they call that size a double-A, not a lower-case A.  So my double-A silicone breast is on order.  I wonder if you can get those through Amazon?

Poke tally

port  38  (I only have two herceptin treatments left!!!!)

right arm 12

tummy  6

left arm  6

right breast 2++

left breast  1+

superior vena cava 1

T9 vertebral body  1

Order

I got my first haircut last week.  It was my first haircut since I was bald last spring.  Now I have a trendy hair-do instead of a dandelion puff.  

(rockin' the new haircut at the apple orchard)

I waited and waited for this haircut, despite the developing mullet, because I was so afraid that the stylist would cut off too much.  Indeed, she shaved my neck down to bald, and probably cut half of the length in many strategic places.  Now it resembles my June hair-do, with some parts a bit longer.  And next time some more parts will be longer.  And the next time, longer.  Until...

(rockin' some long hair at the same orchard last year)

It was strange to part with this hair that I have cultivated since being bald; the lengths of hair that were cut were with me all through chemotherapy.  The longest strands were the ones that never fell out.  I didn't exactly feel sentimental about this hair (it was pretty damaged, and chemotherapy does not conjure fond memories), but I felt like I should have said a few words to let it know that I appreciated it.  Those strands fought hard for their place on my head, and they tried to keep me warm when no other strands would.

Another feeling that led to the disquietude of the haircut is that I yearn for longer hair.  I don't look like myself with short hair.  I can't explain it, but there is a disjunct between how I feel and how I look.  When I think of myself, I still think of a girl who should wear a ponytail from time to time.  My ponytail ghost is long gone (I had one for several months), but I still miss the feeling of hair brushing on my neck.  Also, it is no minor variable that the short hair makes me look like my brother.  Perhaps if I didn't look exactly like a confirmed dude, I'd be more comfortable with short hair.  

This all got me to thinking about why I was cutting my hair.  If I'm so anxious for it to get long again, why would I cut it?  For beauty?  That doesn't seem like something I'd do off-hand.  For order is more like it.  I wanted to bring order to the disorder, or as my husband likes to put it, look like I have a PhD.

But sometimes, isn't order beautiful?  NPR did a story about a Swiss artist named Ursus Wehrli who photographs jumbled up things

and then organizes them.

My hair is no work of Wehrli (although I'd like do see what he'd do with it!), but his way of organizing things really is beautiful.  The other thing that struck me about his work is how beautiful the chaos is before he organizes it.  So I will proceed in a brief state of ordered hair, until my next haircut in six months saves me either from the brink of hair pandemonium or a mullet, whichever is worse.  And I'll be beautiful the entire time.  

Evolution of a scar

I've been doing some reading lately about breast reconstruction.  Not about the gross science-y stuff about reconstruction, but the social and psychological stuff.  I'm not at all considering reconstruction, but now that I'm not in the thick of cancer treatment I've found myself curious about why women get reconstruction.  Yea yea, isn't it obvious that the appearance of two breasts is better than one or no breasts?  This is probably what I would have thought, if I had thought about it Before.  But now that I've journeyed through the cancer treatment gauntlet, I'm not so sure.

First of all, surgeries are both painful and a pain in the a$$.  Everything hurts, and continues to hurt long after the hurt is supposed to be gone.  Electing for surgeries that are not a necessary part of cancer treatment is currently beyond my capacity.   

Secondly, if I was uncomfortable with artificial body parts before, why should I suddenly be more comfortable now?  Especially with a relatively expendable body part?

We all know, or at least have learned by now, that I am a practical person.  The above viewpoints should therefore come as no surprise.  However, I am in full support of other women choosing reconstruction.  I am therefore trying to learn why they make this choice.  My purpose is not to see if I'm right or wrong, but to learn about these other viewpoints.

In my small, non-scientific survey, I have found that the perception of others is the primary reason that women choose to reconstruct.  I have determined this by reading dozens of anecdotes in numerous books. Most women want to look good (normal?) in clothes, and they want to be sexually attractive.  What I find interesting about this is that it seems to me that retaining attractiveness is at their own expense, both in terms of potential medical problems with the reconstruction and the fact that the reconstructed breast often has no feeling.  Did you know that latter fact, about the loss of feeling?  It seems obvious, but I never thought about it before and I didn't know that.  It seems to me that if I had no feeling in my reconstructed breast that that would be a constant reminder that it was for someone else and not me.  Call me selfish, but I would hate that.

The other way of thinking about "wanting to look good in clothes" is a positive self-image.  Many women state that they just don't feel like women without the appearance of two breasts.  This underscores the importance of continued improvements in reconstruction technology and healthcare support.  Also, mastectomy is not the only condition that might lead someone to opt for breast work.  Reconstruction is a good choice for women who may psychologically struggle otherwise.  

I'm sure there are others, but I've only read about one woman thus far with an attitude similar to mine.  She thinks of herself as an Amazon, a strong and active woman who can now execute her life with improved physical prowess in the absence of a breast.  I don't yet see myself as an Amazon, but I can relate to the improved functionality of my new physique.

Also, I'm learning to see the beauty in my asymmetry.  I hold my head high and walk around with confidence.  My spouse constantly affirms my beauty.  I have bought a few new shirts that are asymmetric and complimentary.  I can now see asymmetry everywhere in the world, and it has unusual beauty.  I truly do not feel that I need a reconstructed breast.  

My scar itself is also remarkable.  It keeps changing.  Will it ever stop?  It started pink, then turned to white (perhaps because of radiation?), then pink with white in the middle, then red with white in the middle, and now a deep red.  It's slightly raised in some places, yet exceedingly smooth in others.  It itches sometimes.  The evolution of my scar is symbolic of the psychological journey about breasts, sexuality, and beauty that I am on.  Always interesting and never done changing.