I've written quite a bit about the absence of hair on my head. I'm bald and female, and in this culture that's weird. I stick out.
Here's the other side. The rest of my hair is mostly gone too - legs, arms, underarms, and all the other places I formerly had hair are basically bare. Before chemo, I had always been very well-endowed in the body hair department, and now after I disguise my bald head with a favorite headscarf or hat, I feel like I fit in better than I did in my phenomenally hairy, not-on-chemo body. These days, without spending hours waxing, shaving, plucking, or bleaching, my body looks more like what mainstream media tells us is feminine and beautiful and normal. And I feel feminine and beautiful and normal.
Do you realize what I just said? "Beauty" is definitely not on the list of side effects I was handed during Therapy 1.1, but in the eyes of the media, the culture, and myself Chemotherapy makes me beautiful. That sounds very very wrong to me. Dripping poison in my veins makes me feel horrible and gross and sick and ultimately it makes me look good? Something has got to be badly broken in a culture that holds up as attractive the appearance that arises from such misuse. Misuse by chemotherapy, by anorexia, by cancer-causing tanning beds, by skin-damaging hair removal products, rib-crushing girdles, and joint-destroying heels . . . (Of course all of these torture devices are targeted at women. The patriarchal political dominance through cultural opression is so obvious as to be put in parenthases.) Should we not instead value well-ness and celebrate its embodiment? Should we not seek to live wholly in our bodies as they were made for us? Finally it becomes a question of transforming the culture we live in while still living within it.
P.S. That eyelash is still holding on.
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Hey, Margaret. I've had comments, when I've been feeling really bad, that I look really good. I always grin and say "illness enhances me."
ReplyDeleteIllness enhances you. Does "living in my natural body" include enjoying my beautiful greying hair and the wrinkles all over me? I'm convinced it does.
Thanks for sharing the days of your life with us. It is amazing healing for me.
peace love joy hope Welda
Margaret & Welda, would you say "illness makes us more real" about what does & does not matter? I've never walked in cancer shoes but am guessing that's true. Not to say that you weren't real before cancer, Margaret, but perhaps you're helping the rest of us be more real.
ReplyDeleteDebbie
Hi Grit,
ReplyDeleteThis point of yours hits home to me as someone who has also dealt with excess unfeminine body hair. For a long time I was embarressed to look at people in the eye because I didn't consider myself beautiful because of this hair and thought no one would want to look at me. I was hard on myself for not being pretty enough. I had a few years of panicked plucking, every morning before work, and throughout the day I was look in a mirror to make sure I had plucked every fresh new hair. AH! I missed one! Crap! Now, I can't look at anyone until I find my emergency tweezers.
Do men know the pressure they place on women to be beautiful?