Finding Beauty through the Battle

From left to right: Kim Smith, Susan Morley and Karen Wrinkle. This picture was taken after my mum decided to shave her hair because of the upcoming treatments she was going to go through.

Beauty through the Fight

Emily Morley

My mum laid her bag of entertainment down, plopped on the stiff hospital bed and swung her legs around, resting her head on the rock-solid pillow. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and forced a smile to show me she was fine. She was trying to be strong to tell me that it was just another treatment of chemotherapy. When the nurse finally returned to start my mum with her treatment, the reality kicked in. Watching the nurse set the bag on the elevated hook and prep my mum’s skin to inject the chemicals caught my breath and erased my imagination with reality. I knew this day would be hard but it was the smell of the musty hospital mixed with the chemicals, and the look on my mum’s face that hit me the most.

Battling breast cancer is one of the most emotionally draining experiences a woman can go through. She is forced to change her life plan to accommodate an unwanted tumor in her body. She is forced to pause her life, rearrange her body in many ways, some that don’t hurt at all and some that take time getting accustomed to, but either way she knows that she will change. Who’s the fairest of them all? There is no definition of beautiful. The ideal person might have the body shape, hair color, skin tone and features that are believed to be “perfect”, but what is perfection? There are so many different varieties of people in the world that are considered beautiful, but who is to determine who is beautiful and who is not. “Beauty is based on or a lack of something that a creature should by nature posses” (Riordan 133). Society has put an image of the perfect woman’s body out there for the public to see and is influencing what the definition of a beautiful and perfect person is. In this paper you will hear about three strong women who have battled through breast cancer and how they fought to find beauty. During a woman’s journey through breast cancer many things will challenge her, but feeling beautiful will end up being her hardest battle.

Colleen Luther was only twenty-seven years old when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. None of her family members had cancer and so this diagnosis was a shock to everyone. She went through chemotherapy and radiation but the effects of these treatments weren’t the worst things she had to deal with. Even though the chemicals made her tired and her hair slowly fell out, it was the fact that she couldn’t be the active person she used to be. While going through chemotherapy Colleen gained a lot of weight because of the drugs she had to take to counter the strong chemotherapy, including steroids that would prevent any allergies to the chemotherapy, and hormonal medication. One of the hardest parts of this journey for Colleen was pausing her life and sitting with what she had to deal with, but she knew it was temporary, except for the aging of her body. Before Colleen was diagnosed with breast cancer she was tall, had long black hair and clear skin. This all changed when she had to start her therapies. She did not feel embarrassed, but rather invisible. “ ‘Unattractive’ people are often ignored and barely seen as people. It’s a horrible feeling” (C. Luther). But, according to Darwin, “everyone is beautiful because men and women choose attractive people so the beauty will always be passed on to the next generation” (Banner 205). Many women go through denial when they start losing their hair during chemotherapy because it is their security blanket. Colleen felt like “an alien in [her] own skin” which affected how she looked at herself, but it also affected the health factor of this whole experience (C. Luther). Breasts also gives a woman confidence in herself because they are “built-in advertisements”, so to lose your hair and your breasts makes you rely on your other body parts to make you feel like a woman (Eco 63). Colleen was affected by what the treatments did to her, but she was more scared about what her future would look like. When asked the question, “has your image of a beautiful person changed since your experience”, she responded open-mindedly and said, “I hope it’s gotten more diverse”(C. Luther).

“One day life is going along as it should and the next thing you know your life is turned upside down” (K. Smith). My Aunty Kim was the first in the Jenkinson family to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Her father had had throat cancer and she knew that this disease ran in the family, but she never thought she would get it. She quickly realized that breast cancer treatment was not the same for everyone and staying focused on getting better would be the easiest way to deal with it. The full impact of the experience and the emotions hit Kim after she was done with all of her treatments. She was very sensitive to the medications that were given to her, which not only affected her emotionally, but also physically. Even though the sickness that came along with the chemical medicine was horrible, there were also a lot of long-term effects that Kim went through and this is still going on today. When her hair started falling out she knew that the easiest way to deal with it was to go to a hairdresser and ask for them to shave it off. She describes this part of the battle as feeling like her life had stopped and everyone else’s was moving forward at a normal pace. Kim states that there were days when she felt ugly, but she would always try to think to the future of when she would be finished treatment and feel normal again. Even though she was not happy about the way she looked during her treatments and she felt like she was the center of attention in public, she says recently it does not affect her as much. She expresses, “My personal story has made me aware of things. When I am dressed and someone meets me [for the first time], they don’t know that I have scars and am missing my real breasts. They only judge me by how I look on the outside. From what I have been through it makes me realize that everyone has a story… it sounds corny but you can’t judge a book by its cover” (K. Smith).

My mum, Susan Morley, was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2008. Her sister Kim Smith had already been through this battle, so having some experience of what might happen, my mum was not willing to let the diagnosis discourage her. She was not so concerned for herself, but rather for her family and husband. She went through chemotherapy, which did not make her sick, but she said that losing her eyelashes and eyebrows was the hardest thing to deal with. Seeing my mum go through this difficult time without a choice hurt me more than anything. I could deal with her not having hair for a couple of months or that she would never have her real breasts, but not knowing what was in the near future scared my whole family the most. My mum in the beginning of chemotherapy, when she lost her hair, wore scarves. She thought that wearing a wig in the humid Bahamian weather would drive her crazy and scarves allowed her to be stylish. But during her second round of chemotherapy she wore a wig, or nothing at all. My mum has always had the attitude of; you are who you are so embrace it, so when she wore a wig she would treat it as a badge of honor. A badge of honor that said, “yes, I am fighting for my life” (S. Morley). Through this battle my mum has felt out of place, but also very fortunate because of all the gifts she has received along the way. “Elizabeth Cady Stanton says that a natural woman whose face and body is not influenced by the media or fashion is less beautiful than a woman who exercises and has a healthy lifestyle” (Banner 206). After she finished her treatments she says that going through an experience like that “has made [her] appreciate that beauty is inside” (S. Morley).

“Every culture has always accompanied its own concept of beauty with it own ides of ugliness” (Riordan 131). There are many different opinions about the way someone should look and act when in public. This is mostly because of the image of the ideal woman that the media is portraying. Unfortunately this image is faulted due to the negative things the model’s do to their bodies. Going through breast cancer as a young woman is very hard because inside you are still striving to be the ideal woman. To lose the things people once complimented you on must be one of the hardest things to live with. Of course, the hair grows back and the sickness from the chemotherapy chemicals disappears, but the memories and the lessons from the journey always stay with the person. Colleen Luther, Kim Smith and my mum Susan Morley, all went through three very different battles through breast cancer and came out with different betrayals of beauty. Beauty is what you make it, and you can live with something that makes you upset, or you can turn it into something beautiful by the change of your imagination.

Works Cited:

Banner, Lois W. American Beauty. United States of America: The University of Chicago Press Ltd., 1983.

Eco, Umberto. History of Beauty. United States of America: Rizzoli International Publications, 2004.

Kayaking around Highbourne Cay on New Years Day, The Bahamas. 31 Dec. 2010.

Luther, Colleen. Personal Interview. 13 Jan. 2012.

Morley, Susan. Personal Interview. 12 Jan. 2012

Riordan, Teresa. Inventing Beauty. United States of America: Broadway Books, 2004.

Sister picture, The Bahamas. 27 July. 2008.

Smith, Kim. Personal Interview. 13 Jan. 2012.