Manon Garcia and Simone de Beauvoir remind us that the women’s body is a “social body” even before being a “lived body”. In the case of the treatment of breast cancer, this notably involves injunctions to femininity through the care offered in the context of “reconstruction”.
These injunctions are part of a heteronormative and sexist system, which sends women back to their status as objects of men’s desire. Under the guise of “repairing” the psychological injury induced by a “self-image” degraded by the disease and the treatments, these injunctions are linked to protocols which objectify the patients and set up a reassuring and overhanging framework in the head of the team. caregiver.
The first example that I would like to question is that of oocyte freezing, which is systematically offered to patients of childbearing age, and who must undergo chemotherapy. If it remains a personal choice, the very fact of probing the patient within the framework of the protocol confronts her with the question of motherhood and her “destiny” as a woman, as a social body. If for some women the decision may seem clear, for others, depending on age, social status, marital status, or even culture, this imminent questioning can turn out to be brutal and crystallize the whole social pressure that weighs on women around procreation. The fact that oocyte freezing is automatically provided for in the care of patients is a sign that women’s bodies are places of perpetuation of the species, which can suppose an inner conflict for some women.
Then, the first visible trace left by the treatments is that of the operation, whether it is a radical mastectomy (total removal of the breast) or a lumpectomy (partial removal), the intervention leads to mutilation . The other visible effect that is most often associated with the image we have of the disease is alopecia (loss of hair, body hair and eyebrows) caused by chemotherapy. Whether it is mastectomy or alopecia, it is the attack on femininity that crosses the discourse around the disease, with all that the breasts cover as a social function, whether it is order of sexualization or motherhood.
But fundamentally, it is first of all an attack on physical integrity. The intimate accounts of postoperative awakening reveal this dichotomy between discourse and experience. Far from that moment they had fantasized about when they collapsed on discovering a part of their forever amputated femininity, for many patients, it is a moment of relief: the evil is eradicated. But this image of a “diminished” woman sent back by the nursing staff and those around her takes precedence, giving way to the dominant and essentializing gaze.
Then, the patients discover a profession that was, for the most part, unknown to them until then: the nurse esthetician. Barely recovered from the throbbing pains, discovering the phantom sensations of an amputated limb, and dragging with them the drains embedded in the skin, they have to deal with an expert oncological beautician who comes to explain how to place a prosthesis which will fill the void left by removal. This intrusion is part of the protocol, and yet the patients were not consulted beforehand.
Caught up in this race for rediscovered femininity, most patients don’t have time to ask questions. But this step questions at least the purpose of this kind of “care”. Prostheses, caps, wigs help to stay “always beautiful” as recalled the many marketing campaigns, which sport the pink hues of the eternal feminine.
Finally, as for the less visible traces, the list is long and not exhaustive. In the case of hormone-dependent breast cancers, we can cite the side effects of hormone therapy which are close to the effects of menopause (in the youngest patients, we also speak of “artificial menopause“): cessation of menstruation, vaginal dryness, loss of libido, weight gain, fatigue, depression, loss of concentration, joint pain, etc.
This image of a “diminished” woman conveyed by the nursing staff and those around them takes precedence, giving way to the dominant and essentializing gaze.
However, Maëlle Sigonneau drew attention to a striking figure: one in six women declares that they do not follow, or badly, their treatment when it is administered after curative treatments to avoid recurrence and that it could “save their life”. These figures, which only reflect the declared face, once again raise the question of the weight of patriarchal injunctions, which leads some women to preserve their ability to procreate, their figure or their sexual availability, rather than their life.
Therefore, is it not paradoxical, as Maëlle Sigonneau pointed out, that patients who undergo all these heavy treatments in the hope of living a long life, and therefore of aging, comply with the absurdity of injunctions to youth and beauty. But the injunctions are powerful and pre-exist the disease. They aim for an unattainable ideal have the strength to silence and smooth out the rough edges of their monstrosity.