A Word on Vanity -- or Wearing my Battlescar with Pride

I've been going around with one boob, and not even a bra -- so forget a prosthesis. I don't even have a real one yet -- just the one I crocheted when I couldn't figure out the knit instructions Maretta sent (the link is in the comments for a post I made months ago, probably at the beginning of my treatment.) I had been planning for that to be a temporary thing, but I find myself liking the asymmetrical look more and more.

I am wearing a sports bra again, today for the first time since radiation -- My scar has finally healed enough that a bra doesn't hurt! Still, I have nothing in the bra on the right side -- because I don't have to; sports bras are flat til you put something in them.

And I find I like that look just fine. A sports bra with nothing else. Nice and easy, no extra time needed for getting dressed -- and it looks fine! I don't get all these women who worry about how they look with only one breast. I think it looks fine -- nice, even! And it's not because I'm not vain.

I didn't like the eyebrowless look. I thought I looked like an alien without eyebrows. The first makeup I've ever bought and used almost consistently was eyebrow pencil. (Okay so I wasn't real consistent. I couldn't always be bothered...... but I had a pencil in my backpack in case I ever went anywhere I wanted to have eyebrows on for -- that's pretty serious, for me!)

And then there's my thing about eye color. I could have stayed on the xalatan, a wonderful glaucoma medicine with no adverse effects except that it will probably turn my eyes brown. I went off it. Is that smart? It's not entirely stupid -- my eye pressures are okay. They were a little better on the xalatan, though..... It's just vanity really.

But I am liking the uniboob look more and more. One pretty breast or two pretty breasts -- who cares? (Okay so it's a droopy breast, as Em points out, but that's okay too. I didn't want a teenaged breast again. Been there, done that.) I don' t wear particularly loose fitting clothes, either -- now that the burn is better, anyway! (I did while the burn was oozy, because my shirts stuck to it -- and wearing gauze made it worse.) I have decided that the two boob thing is just one of those things people expect to see, and so everyone with a mastectomy tries to emulate it. It's actually not necessary, and maybe if more women went around sporting one boob, women wouldn't feel bad about looking like this the way most of them seem to.

Besides, who are we protecting, when we hide the evidence of our breast cancer? It seems to me that breast cancer is spreading rather quickly -- and that there is an increasing number of environmental factors involved. What better way to let people know that I've been there and might be able to offer some help or at least shared experience, than to wear my battlescar with pride?