What Risks We Take in the Name of FEMININTY

"Obese abdomen and remaining pendulous breast" is what Audre Lorde's doctor wrote in his notes about her body after recovering from cancer! What in the heck?  How dare?  Focusing on menial, socially described, shallow guidelines of what constitutes femininity is absolutely absurd.  As a doctor, his primary responsibility is to help the sick become better.  In this case, Lorde was the sick; however, he was so enmeshed in the physique of a beautiful Black woman that he looked over the medical complications that she was having.  HE, not a her, was obviously influenced by the societal implications of femininity and masculinity.  I love the fact that Lorde as an "educated" Black woman did not take the doctor's words as a final say.  Rather, she did her own research to find answers of her.  She was not going to let a socially influenced doctor tell her what to do any further.  She really opened my eyes.  It never occurred to me that the concerns lesbian women have after a mastectomy differs from heterosexual women.  On one hand, heterosexual women are influenced by what society says a "true" woman is.  While, lesbian women's image is not influenced by societal standards of femininity and true womanhood.  Thus, after losing a breast (or maybe even both) their concerns lie in the realm of survival versus what are people going to think of me because I have lost what defines me as a woman? 

Just thinking about what causes breast cancer is quite freighting.  It almost brings me to the point of starvation or just choosing to be a vegan.  Those links between animal fat, hormone production, and breast cancer--this is why young girls are developing much earlier.   Another disturbing point that I would like to point out is the fact that Lorde told she would be disturbing the 'morale' of the clinic, if she did not in fact wear the prostheses breast! What in the heck? For her to make that decision it shows strength as well as her survival with cancer.  She (and I definitely) agree does not have to wear fake breast to appease society and the little militant functioning citizens.  She is an individual and the way in which she deals with her cancer differs from the norm.  Bringing up the point about the Prime Minister's eye was excellent in that illustrated the sexist undertones of the medical world.  It also demonstrates how the medical world is in fact influenced by the social world.  That is quite interesting to think about.  A prostheses allows an individual to do physical things for a real function.  Lorde points out that only fake breast were to appear in shape, size, and symmetry to onlookers or to at least yield external pressure.  It is obvious that there are differences that lie between men and women who receive prostheses.  There is no body part that is seemingly visible on men; thus, the pressure to wear a prostheses is absent.  However, the pressures that women like Lorde are rampant in order not to disrupt a social reality where lines between femininity and masculinity are well defined.  A world that is "woman-phobic."  It is this social construction of difference and body ideal that create the notions of dichotomous gender roles.