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I understand why Melissa Etheridge bared her bald head at the Grammys a few weeks ago. After all, I wore bright, red lipstick to my mastectomy. It was my way of saying I knew I would still be a woman when I woke up with a blood-soaked bandage where my breast used to be.
I think Melissa was saying something similar at the Grammys. She was showing us the ravages, and the surprising beauty, revealed by breast-cancer treatments. Her baldness reminded me of all the women I know who, like me, have sacrificed breasts and hair to try to save their lives. We have traded in our beauty for some kind of cure. But something strange often happens when we lose the bling--the big boobs and big hair--of womanhood. We're left with what I call "inner cleavage," and no plastic surgeon can sculpt it. It is the beauty that exists when everything else has been stripped away.
It's hard to be an inner-cleavage gal when big boobs and big hair are all the rage. The Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, Victoria's Secret catalogs and Janet Jackson's nipple flash challenge inner cleavage by making us feel like less in a breast-obsessed culture. Reality TV shows like the "The Swan" threaten it by trying to make us believe that a new do, a new nose, a new tummy and especially a new rack equal a better life.
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While "The Swan" transforms an ugly duckling into an elegant, long-necked beauty, my breast cancer took an attractive 27-year-old woman and left her bald, lopsided and brokenhearted. As "reality me" unfolded, my breast went from an A to a double DD (on one side!), and the steroids from the chemo left me a far-from-bronzed shade of green and 15 pounds plumper. If I sound bitter, I'm not. The surprise ending to my reality show was that after I lost everything, I began to see my true beauty.
It wasn't my new boobs (although I did get a perky Park Avenue set so I wouldn't have to worry about padding myself to look even every morning) that got me my inner cleavage. It was the confidence that came with knowing that I still existed as a woman, as a person, when my outer beauty fell away. What was left was my spirit, raw and powerful and hanging on with claws, daring me to keep living.
I still existed even though every fast-growing cancer cell was being killed by the chemotherapy. My brain still worked and I got promoted at work. My friends were still mine, even truer. And my husband still loved me, the me that was left. I wasn't reinventing, I was discovering what was always there. There was no time to wonder if my butt looked too big in what I was wearing, I just wanted to live. My big teeth, my crooked nose, my too-black hair became inconsequential. Me was all there was.
My Grammy moments added up slowly. As my veins grew black from the chemo, I pulled my sleeves down over my arms and decided to show leg instead. I had sex with my bandages on. I wore a baseball cap instead of a wig, and I got a heart tattoo instead of a nipple tattoo. I even posed topless with one breast for a breast-cancer handbook to show other women what a mastectomy looked like. When I looked at the picture, I expected to notice my scar first, the largest defect in the photo. Instead, all I could look at were my eyes... and some sort of courage staring back at me, so unfamiliar it convinced me I had never seen myself before.
I continued to wear bright, red lipstick. It must have been jarring to see such a broken woman wearing a shade usually reserved for models and rocker chicks. I never would have thought that I could pull it off, but when everything else went, it was all that I had. I understand them now, the hunched-over old ladies you see with crimson lips.
Although I am tempted to, now that men look at me again on the street, I can't get invested in the outer beauty that has been returned to me--thanks to my long hair and revved-up rack. I know I am only a blood test away from being bald and reconstructed.
I remember the puking in the recovery room too well to ever be lured back into an operating room for cellulite or sagging. I do worry about the "swans"--and wonder about the moment when they crane their newly nipped necks to look in the mirror for the first time. Have they tricked themselves, too, or only us?
I know why Melissa sang bald. I also know why she never sounded or looked better. Amid all the cleavage and hair bling, her bald head was shining a message to us about beauty. About reclaiming it and wearing it in our own feisty way.
Just this past weekend, I had my hair shampooed by a bald woman. I was curious and must have stared a little too long.
"My luck, I work in a hair salon and I am going through chemo," she said. Before I could even tell her how beautiful she looked, she stopped me.
"I was wearing a scarf all the time, and then I saw Melissa. I just threw it out."
There are a lot of breast-cancer survivors busting to come out... just watch us.
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