Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy (21 page)

I am unsure of how to introduce myself to such a famous photographer —does she even care what my name is? It’s sort of that feeling you get when you introduce yourself to your new gynecologist. She just wants to look. I am the one-boobed poster girl. This famous photographer usually photographs celebrities—strictly A-list, no B’s. What am I?

I had done a Google search on the famous photographer before my session, and I was thoroughly impressed. She has traveled across America and captured bizarre and disturbing images in the heartland. One of her most famous shots is of a little girl smoking in her plastic kiddy pool. The picture is pretty incredible because she actually got the rings of smoke, and the way this little girl is standing, she looks so mature. But then you see her pudgy thighs sticking out of a frilly bathing suit and remember that she is only eight, and how could her mother let her smoke a cigarette? This is good photography. She has even had fellowships named after her, and exhibitions in Venice and Barcelona, and her work starts conservatively at ten grand.

Then I notice something that terrifies me. There are a lot of stylists for this shoot: hair, makeup, and wardrobe. Good-looking, cool young guys standing around, kind of slouching, posing, looking bored, but snapping to attention whenever she needs something. Are they going to be in the room? Will they see my scar, too? I have no problem with the camera, the photographer, and other breast cancer patients seeing it, but these guys? I mean, they seem sweet, but I don’t want them to look at me without my shirt on. Should I ask them to leave? But is that totally hypocritical to show my boobs to thousands of strangers and care that a few people will see them first? I don’t want to make waves before I take off my shirt. I want them to like me before they need to see me.

I watch her moving around her studio, commanding it in a very synchronized fashion while taking the picture of a woman before me. There is a lot of commotion as she adjusts her light and lens, and then she takes some deep breaths. There is absolute silence before the loud, crackling, flashbulb
pop
. It is as if she is capturing the image in her net, like a butterfly.

An assistant ushers me over to the buffet while the photographer is finishing her last photo. The buffet is magnificent. There are little signs that explain the food in detail: free-range chicken salad with basmati rice and organic beets and basil vinaigrette. Maybe this is why women pose topless? I am excited to dig in, but the now anxious assistant tells me, “Sorry, you can’t eat now because she is ready for you.” I am led across the large loft, and everyone parts like the Red Sea.

I don’t know what I think should come next but I am stunned. Just “Take off your shirt.” I don’t know how I thought I would actually remove my shirt. Maybe I thought that they would wrap me in a cloak like those art school nude models, and suddenly the gown would fall to the floor in a dramatic whoosh. The assistants don’t give me a gown and they are not leaving the room. She tells me to stand on a platform. And she is waiting for me to take off my shirt.

I am tugging on my T-shirt to stall while deciding if I should play along and be cool or ask everyone to leave except her and the
camera
. I am trying hard to be blasé: So what that I am posing topless even though I only have one boob? But I am a lot more scared than I thought I was going to be. I start to sweat and that’s when I panic, because I remember that I have not worn deodorant—I was scared a white ring might show under my armpit in the picture.

I realize how ridiculous it is that I chose to wear a foxy bra. It does not matter. It’s boob time. I am fumbling with my bra strap and I look up and that’s when I meet her eyes for the first time. She seems to be getting impatient with me and I feel like a melon waiting to be examined in the produce section.

I am still fumbling with my bra and there is still a small crowd just waiting to see what I look like. I am terrified to unhook my bra around all these cool people. I am chickening out. One of them approaches me with a can of hair spray and a blow dryer to break the tension and fix my hair, which is now messy from pulling my T-shirt so sharply over my head. She glares at him and turns her attention to me. She instantly starts seducing me. She tells me that I look perfect. She is a flirt—it is hard to say no to her.

“Don’t touch her hair. I love it wild like that.”

Someone in the small crowd tells her he has not done my makeup and another says he has not even touched my hair. She doesn’t care. She wants my bra off. Now.

What is she thinking? I didn’t even brush my hair this morning because they told me they would have “hair and makeup” at the shoot. My hair is the authentic bed-head look and I am craving some lipstick. I ask her if I could have some lipstick, please, pretty please, I need lipstick. I need something to center me here. I need to lick that beeswax and taste the courage.

“Give her some lipstick!”

This is more like it. But she will only indulge me so long and she starts to sigh and I know the bra has to come off.

I want this famous photographer to like me. I want to be cool. I don’t want it to seem like a big deal. But it is. Forget my messy hair and that I need makeup—I need a nipple. I am fretting that my reconstructed mastectomy-side breast is so much higher than the other real one, there is no symmetry. I can hide it with bras that have underwire and smush them up so there is an illusion that things are working, but there is nowhere to hide here under the bright lights that she is instructing another assistant to adjust.

I keep breathing and take off the bra.

Breathe. Look up.

Breathe. Look down.

Breathe. I see my tattoo and I smile, but I do wish for maybe a second that I had gotten a nipple. I could really use a nipple at a time like this.

She walks over to me and tells me to put my hands on my hips.

“What?”

Maybe I am naïve but I thought she was going to put me in some artistic pose where you couldn’t really see a full frontal . . . maybe an arm draped gracefully across my chest so you couldn’t tell I’m missing my right nipple, or maybe I would cup my hands under my breasts so they would be slightly covered?

“Can’t I just drape my arm over my chest?” Now I am begging.

“No. Everyone will wonder what you’re hiding. Put your hands on your hips!”

I must have completely tensed my body because she yells, “Stop!” and has to reposition my hands. I am such a loser that I cannot even put my hands on my hips correctly. I start sweating more. The men are now very close, hovering and inspecting my hands to make sure they are right. Do I smell? I could have used my husband’s deodorant because it’s a clear stick, to avoid deodorant lines in my topless photo. Do they airbrush out deodorant lines? Can they airbrush in a nipple?

When I look around everyone is still gathered about the photographer and waiting. They have seen my chest. They are slouching as if to show they don’t care, but they must be horrified. They are pretending not to notice me, which is making it worse. I don’t know what I expect them to say. I’d be relieved if they were thinking “It doesn’t look as bad as we thought it would.” Every time she moves they are anticipating her reactions and ready to lurch.

She positions me on a platform in front of the camera. There is complete silence in the room as she steps behind her camera.

It is a camera that perfectly matches her. It is spectacular. Grand. I have never seen a camera so big. It must be six feet long and three feet wide. It looks old-fashioned and makes a lot of noises. One of the articles I read said that she takes pictures with this camera and that there are only three in the country! I picture her driving across the Midwest with the camera in its own car. On the front of the camera is the word
Polaroid
, and it is not until I look up at the photo on the wall that I realize what Polaroid means. As in instant picture. The photo is almost billboard size, black and white, of course (she only photographs in black and white). It is of a young woman who did not have reconstruction and she seems so brave and proud of herself. I have never seen such large pictures—they are imposing and humongous. I am not that brave. I cannot have this picture taken. I am wondering how large my scar will look blown up on a billboard as I hear the momentary silence and see stars from the flash of white light. The white flash reminds me of the operating room lights and I have the same strange dizzy sensation that I felt when they put me to sleep before my surgeries. I lick my lipstick for strength.

It takes about six minutes for the camera to spit out the picture. I am standing on the platform covering myself with a shirt someone has brought over to me. I have not put it on, I am just holding it up. There is lots of gurgling, and the mood in the room feels clouded with the tension of waiting. There is only whispering so as not to disturb her.

I cannot help but feel dread. I am so scared that this picture will be awful. Now I have almost forgotten my motivation for being charitable. Now I am only vain. Just waiting for a billboard-sized me with no “hair and makeup,” no nipple, no beauty.

I stare up at the white emptiness waiting for myself to appear. I am waiting for the reaction of the men in the room, too. I know that they will all be disappointed.

I am thinking this will be the same disappointment I’ve felt seeing every picture ever taken of me, but even worse. Either my nose looked crooked or my teeth were too big or I hated my outfit. I remember my second grade school picture. My hair was knotted and I was wearing a hand-me-down yellow shirt with an elephant that was awful. In my high school graduation picture my bangs looked like a helmet and my cheeks were chubby. I had given up on liking my image. Somehow I always thought I looked better than the picture showed. Photos betrayed me. People would console me by saying, “You’re much prettier in person.”

Everyone follows her to the wall. Two of them climb a ladder and take clothespins to fasten the eight-foot version of me on the wall. I cannot watch. I am still posed on the platform holding my hands on my hips the way she had instructed. I think I might vomit. When I do glance up the paper is blank, and everyone is holding their breath as the image is revealing itself, developing in chunks of gray, black, and white before them.

Suddenly, the mood has changed as if a breeze had blown through the studio. She is giddy. So everyone is happy. I have to look over to see what the commotion is. Has someone told a joke? They are smiling and standing around in a semi-circle. They are all huddled around the eight-foot version of me.

I take a peek and I am tempted to see more. To give scale perspective, my belly button is about the size of a silver dollar. I walk towards the crowd and overhear snippets: “Strong. Jawbone—fabulous.” “Fantastic cheeks.”

I am waiting to hear what they say about the huge three-foot-wide scar, the off-center mound, the missing nipple, the obvious flaws of the photo.

I can’t look . . . not yet. I need to speak to her first. I have changed my mind and can’t allow this picture to be published. I will make her burn it—I will pay her $10,000 if I have to.

I pull her aside and I mumble, stutter, for the first time in my life. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I thought when I agreed to be in the magazine that I might be able to cover my mastectomy scar a little more. I am so mortified. I’m scared for other women to see my wound. They’ll be scared. This is all wrong.”

She looks confused. Have I insulted her?

“LOOK AT YOURSELF! You look so”—pause—“ballsy! My God. It’s so powerful.”

I tell her I’m scared to look. I start to cry. I squint up and gulp in my humiliation. The men in the room are handsome and I suddenly realize how revealed I am. I have spent so much time in front of the mirror trying to conceal the missing breast. I found the right bras, the right shirts. I even have cleavage. I can pass. No one has known what I really look like underneath it all. I have only allowed myself to look in the shadows at night. That scar. My wound.

I remember how scared I had been to first look at myself after surgery. Dr. B had made me. I remember how scared I had been to look at my new tattooed nipple. Josh made me. I had accepted those moments as small victories, but they did not sustain.

This was the first time I would see myself in a photo, and it was eight feet tall. This is the first time I would see my new body with no cover-ups and hiding. When I finally look I cover one eye.

I don’t recognize myself. I see my eyes and a depth I have never seen before. I see a journey. My eyes are telling me that I can look now. I can see me. What has developed on that paper is different than what I had ever imagined myself to be.

I am face to face with an eight-foot, black-and-white version of myself, at first unfamiliar, until she convinces me that it is me. The camera does not lie. There are no judgments, no voices, no wishes, no more what I wanted to be. There I am—no hiding, no posing, no touch-ups, no giggles, no sorrys, no sunglasses, no excuses, no mojo, no baseball caps, no wigs, no comparisons, no push-up bra that makes me look normal, no time to get angry . . .

I see my lipstick. It is ironic that my lipstick and the scar are the same color red. The black and white photo does not show this, but I know.

I remember the first time I wore it, when I thought only movie stars could really pull it off. This lipstick is not about glamour. I do deserve to wear it, though. I remember putting on the lipstick before being wheeled into my surgery. I remember how hopeful I wanted the lipstick to be, to remind me of a life that might await me. I remember when I had stopped wearing lipstick because no one was looking anyway. Maybe now, it is just for me. I remember how I hoped I would wear lipstick again on my own terms. Now I have, and for the whole world to see.

I am not the same. I have definitely changed. I see one breast that nursed a baby, and one breast that nearly killed me. It is this contradiction that has vexed me: life and death are both so close to my heart now.

My scar looks like a skid mark, where I hit the brakes and came so close to death. I want to finally accept it while it is in front of me, blown up in black and white. It is revealing my pain for everyone to see and there is no hiding.