Audre Lorde’s essay “Breast Cancer: Power vs. Prosthesis” from the Cancer Journals speaks on how much emphasis is placed on appearance and illusion. As a black lesbian feminist she didn’t worry about no longer appealing to men or that having had a mastectomy would make others uncomfortable. Lorde’s focus was on remaining healthy and surviving cancer but she wasn’t allowed to experience and work through the change she’d just experienced. Instead there was immense pressure to don a prosthetic breast to put others at ease.
I can’t imagine having to push your feelings aside and just pretend that nothing had changed. Even in surviving breast cancer the focus on a woman’s appearance never lessens. When are you off the hook of the expectations of society?
Susan Wendell states that “social conditions affect people’s bodies by creating or failing to prevent sickness and injury.” (p. 36) Lorde also mentions the politics of the health industry in her essay. Unfortunately time and again the priority is on profits instead of healing. Not much is done about preventing diseases, unhealthy habits are actually endorsed. The availability of cheap unhealthy food contrasts how expensive it is to purchase organic nutritious food.
4 comments:
I agree with you totally. In regards to your first paragraph you raise a good point. How is that her own recovery was put on the back burner simply to put others at ease, how ridiculous is that? After surviving cancer, having to have an entire breast removed, and undergoing endless medicinal treatment one would think the patient she be at the forefront of the issue here but apparently not since it makes other uncomfortable for her to be a walking example of her own experience.
I definitely agree, no matter what women have gone through, they still have to fit societies standards of what it is to be a woman and what it is to be feminine. When do we get a pass?I applaud Audre Lorde for her courage and strength not to ignore, but embrace what was happening to her.
It is amazing how society has allowed sickness to become profitable. As long as there is profit in people being sick there will never be a cure for cancer or any other disease. Wendal is correct, disease is forced on us by the ills of society. Most of the victims of this ill society are women. We stress about our weight, what to cook for dinner, making ends meet, sexism and racism on the job and in school. Wow!!!!!
I agree with you as well, in how people are always finding different ways to market illnesses. If it isn't for a drug, maybe it is a new wig, or scarf, or shoe. Why can't people just accept people for their differences? Isn't that the whole idea of having a "melting pot?" Why must everyone conform to the same ideas of "beauty?" I guess this article further proves that disability or not, nobody can escape the critiques and standards society places on people.
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