Breast cancer patients are a special group of people. Not only do they have to suffer from physical pain, but they also have to bear the mental pressure from society and their own hearts. They are struggling to find a way to relieve their inner pain.
Like many cancer patients, Ye Danyang felt that cancer had nothing to do with her until she became ill. The Beijing TV reporter didn’t feel that cancer had anything to do with her until she was 36 years old, when she once took a bath with her young son, who pointed to her chest and asked, “Mom, why do you have a ping-pong ball here?”
From that day on, Ye Danyang’s life became involved with cancer. Now ten years have passed since she first underwent surgery, and her life has long turned to the right track. She still works in Beijing TV station, and when she comes home, she paints and embroiders, writes blogs and books, and occasionally participates in some charity activities. She is cheerful, smiles a lot, likes flowers and pretty clothes, and would forget that she is a breast cancer patient who has had cancer twice in ten years and had chemotherapy eight times five years ago, if she didn’t get tired more easily than normal. Behind her is a large group of people who must suffer twice: both physically and mentally from breast cancer, a very special type of cancer.
Defending the breast
Six months after discovering her abnormal breast, Danyang Ye underwent breast cancer surgery. Before the surgery, she turned her head and saw that Auntie Wang on the left bed was undressing for examination, and she was shocked – her breast was empty on one side, like a rubbing board, skin covered with bones. The first thought that came to her mind was that she must not lose her breasts.
Before she got cancer, Ye Danyang was a self-disciplined person who was extremely hard on herself and strove for perfection – she later found out that many cancer patients have such a “cancer personality”. At that time, she believed that “if I lost my breast, there was no difference between living and dying”, and “if I didn’t have a total mastectomy, it would be worth living five years less.”
The emerging breast-conserving treatment is more risky than traditional mastectomy. Even though some people thought she was risking her life and “loving beauty over life,” she chose to have only 1/4 of her breast removed, her greatest hope being that the surgeon would stitch it up better. After the surgery, her entire breast was cyanotic. Black, thick surgical lines crawled across the breast in hideous terror.
Yu Juan, a young Fudan teacher who died of advanced breast cancer in 2011, once jokingly wrote on her blog, “Now that I think about it, the breast is probably the most useless organ in a woman’s body. But the truth is far from easy.
Unlike other cancers, breast cancer is quite special. It sounds less serious than stomach cancer or lung cancer, but patients have to face more severe psychological and mental stress.
In her novel “Save the Breast” published in 2009, writer Bi Shumin wrote that “disease has a gender and disease has a taste”. In the book, a man with breast cancer describes it this way: high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes are synonymous with luxury and enjoyment, and there is no shame in that; hepatitis immediately makes people think you are not of high status; as long as it is not AIDS, STDs will make men laugh; however, a man who has a “woman’s disease” like breast cancer will However, if a man has a “woman’s disease” such as breast cancer, it will “become a strange story for people to relieve their boredom after tea”.
For some female patients, the loss of a breast is not only a part of the body, but also a psychological feeling of being deprived of female identity, and some people even feel that losing a breast is a taboo thing. In Ye Danyang’s opinion, social pressure still comes from within oneself, and some people have low self-esteem, so they always feel that others are looking at them in a different light.
In May 2007, actress Chen Xiaoxu, who played the role of Lin Daiyu in the TV series “Dream of the Red Chamber”, died of breast cancer, causing a sensation. Chen refused to have surgery or chemotherapy because she “demanded perfection” and “did not want to have any mutilation on her body”.
Because of her own concern for the integrity of her breasts, Ye Danyang often paid attention to the status of women who lost their breasts during the early stages of her illness. In her blog, she described how some of them were discouraged and closed themselves off completely; some complained bitterly and helplessly about the injustice of fate; some forced a smile but were inwardly hostile to healthy people. Many have said to her, “If I don’t have breasts, I’ll die.”
”A woman’s body and a man’s chest”
In 2003, out of professional instinctive sensitivity, Ye Danyang had the idea of filming breast cancer patients the day after her own surgery. As a TV worker and a patient, she felt some responsibility to tell people about the awareness of breast cancer prevention and do something to promote and popularize it.
However, it was extremely difficult to implement the idea. Her colleagues and leaders thought she was joking and advised her to get well first, while the more difficult part was to find breast cancer patients who were willing to appear on camera. She asked her surgeon to help her find a subject, but the patients themselves were often very squeamish, and their families were reluctant. It was hard to find an unmarried girl who had studied abroad and returned to visit her family to initially agree, but in the end, her family politely refused.
Unable to find a shooter, Ye Danyang was determined to make herself the first to eat the crab. On the 14th day after surgery, she started to let her colleagues film herself going through chemotherapy. On camera, she gave herself a shaved head and optimistically went out to buy clothes and dress herself.
It was not until September 2003 that she took the opportunity of Fashion & Health magazine’s call for 50 breast cancer patients to hold a health salon to find some breast cancer patients who dared to attend public events and could open their hearts to the outside world. After that, many people gradually wrote, texted and called Yeh Danyang, agreeing to be the subject of the photo shoot, and some even talked to her on the phone for an hour or two.
At that time, the “Pink Ribbon” breast cancer prevention campaign launched in the United States had been running for more than ten years, and the psychological and social pressure on patients gradually began to loosen.
In 2005, she took a picture of her bare breast and published it in Fashion Health magazine, with a pink ribbon painted on the shocking scar on her chest, but still with a confident smile on her lips. This is also the first frontal naked breast publicity photo of breast cancer patients in China.
For Danyang Ye, who has always had a breast integrity complex, it wasn’t until she interviewed a medical doctor named Chunxue, who had early-stage breast cancer, that she finally changed her mind. Chunxue’s condition was perfectly fine with the option of breast preservation, but she believed in a safer surgical option and insisted on a total excision. She told Ye Danyang, “Beauty and physical integrity are quite important to a woman, but compared to life that’s nothing …… sacrifices are inevitable, but it’s worth it.”
In 2008, Ye Danyang found out that her breast cancer had recurred. After half a year of inner struggle, she decided to remove her breast. After the surgery, she came home in bandages and said to her son anxiously, “Look, I’m already a disabled person.” Her son took one look at her and said calmly, “Mom, you’re just like me now.”
Ye Danyang knew another layer of meaning in these words: she was now a healthy, normal person. She thought of many patients who did not want to tell their families and did not want others to see their wounds, and felt that she was truly relieved. “I have a woman’s body and the same chest and bosom of a man, it’s quite good,” she told China Newsweek, “I am now the real perfect me.”
Thinking of herself as a normal person
Ye Danyang was doing post-production editing for her 11-episode documentary “Precious Breasts” when she was approached by director Guan Hu’s production team to learn something about breast cancer. The wife of one of Guan Hu’s friends was suffering from breast cancer and had some mental anxiety, which attracted him to start paying attention to this special group. Later, the TV series “Live, It’s Good”, which he directed and showed the story of a breast cancer family, was broadcasted in 2008.
In 2010, Hong Kong author Xi Xi’s “Mourning the Breast” was also published in China, and the Hong Kong movie “Born to Die”, based on it and about urban white-collar workers suffering from breast cancer, was already released in 2006.
Breast cancer patients are naturally very concerned about these films and literary works, but many find that their own lives are far removed from the cultural presentation of breast cancer patients.
Bi’s “Save the Breast” is the first full-length novel in China that focuses on psychotherapy. It tells the story of various people who join a psychotherapy group after suffering from breast cancer, including a prostitute, a professor’s daughter who suspects her husband of betraying her, a mysterious man who disguises himself as a woman, and an old soldier who lacks self-personality, in short, almost all of these characters have psychological diseases after suffering from cancer.
”Many breast cancer patients’ feedback is that it is too extreme, and the patients depicted in it are all a bit weird, and some people even feel insulted after reading it, which outsiders without real experience may not feel,” Ye Danyang told China Newsweek, “This is after all a fictional creation, which is understandable. But it is still a bit far from the real life of patients, and there is no real solution to the mental problems of breast cancer patients.”
In Ye Danyang’s observation, most of the real breast cancer patients are emotionally normal, but there are very few patients who have extreme emotional problems and doubt everything – Ye interviewed a patient with early stage breast cancer whose family was in a particularly good condition, who thought her husband did not love her anymore and everyone despised her; when people came to visit her, she closed the door and did not let them in. In another patient, her family lent her money for treatment, but she had to get a divorce from her husband. “But this is basically a psychological problem, not related to the category of breast cancer.” Ye Danyang said.
However, breast cancer patients basically all still have a short fear process, some hold shame and some worry about causing psychological stress to their families. Because of this, many patients prefer to join some cancer rehabilitation organizations to relieve their emotions.
Nowadays, there are many such organizations and some hospitals have such associations. Almost all of the participants are elderly people, some of them organize choirs and dances, and after the activities, we chat to reduce stress. It is a place where you can say things to your fellow patients that you are not comfortable saying to healthy people and family members.
Many patients will get together to discuss some private topics that belong to breast cancer patients, such as breast prosthesis. Nowadays, prosthetic breasts are so realistic that you can’t even see them when swimming or wearing tights, but they are more expensive, so many older aunties choose to sew them by themselves and share their experience with patients. Yu Juan wrote in “This Life Unfinished” about her patients’ interesting experiences with making prosthetic breasts: some made them with cotton, some with mung beans, some with rice, and some with balloons with water; but they also encountered embarrassing situations such as cotton balls being squeezed into their shoulders, mung beans sprouting, rice getting moldy, or water balloons breaking.
With the popularity of the Internet, more breast patients choose to use the Internet to relieve their stress and emotions. Many websites have breast cancer circles or communities, and the breast cancer recovery circle founded by Danyang Ye is also quite popular.
Breast cancer patients believe they have a new life day: the day they have surgery is their new life. In 2012, Danyang Ye’s “10th birthday,” many of her friends from abroad wanted to come to Beijing to plan a birthday party, but Danyang Ye refused. She never wanted to remember this day, she had forgotten that she was a patient.
”It’s not good to stay in the circle of breast cancer patients after the cure, and there are patients in our circle who pass away almost every year,” she said. Ye Danyang has now started her own blog alone, writing about interesting things like raising fish and flowers, trying to be an example to everyone of how to return to personal life.
Breast metaphors and anxiety
Breasts have long gone beyond being a “body organ” and have become a “social organ”. It carries multiple public anxieties about health, aesthetics and morality.
The female breast is probably the most ambiguous organ in the human body. This lactation system, which contains glands, muscle tissue and fat, has long since gone beyond its basic role of nurturing offspring and has become the bearer of human aesthetics. The symbolic and symbolic meaning it has been given interacts closely with social trends, especially in the rapidly changing times of China in recent decades, and the breasts carry an unprecedented sense of human anxiety, health and disease, morality and law, aesthetics and ugliness, the liberated body and the still troubled spirit, all built into a strange psychological landscape through the half-covered breasts.
Body Anxiety
Angelina? Jolie’s decision to cut off her mammary glands was destined to cause a storm. In the United States she was given the label of brave and heroic, and the diagnostic technique that allowed her to make the decision was seen as a milestone in genetic diagnosis. But the people commenting on her move, whether in the US or China, were more concerned with the symbolic imagery behind the removal of a sexy actress’ mammary gland.
In everyday aesthetic and entertainment industry images of women, the breast has long been removed from its functional meaning as a nursing organ and more closely associated with sexiness. The breast, the symbolic organ of the secondary sexuality, is considered to emphasize the woman’s own gender identity, and the shape and size of this modestly exposed organ is allowed to be openly talked about and scrutinized. If the uterus and ovaries are “body organs” that women possess, the breast has long been interpreted as a “socialized organ” that has become a “symbol of femininity”. As the famous American writer Steinbeck said, “If intelligent beings from outer space were to visit Earth, they would think that the reproductive organs of Earth creatures are breasts.” The image of the breast is a response to what the poet Mallarmé called “the eroticism of concealment”.
And with Angelina? Jolie’s breasts have become an iconic prop of the entertainment industry beyond the ordinary aesthetic level. Her mastectomy triggered the Chinese public’s body anxiety about breasts. According to the American Cancer Society in 2012, breast cancer is still the number one malignant tumor among women. And the incidence of breast cancer in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai is similar to that in Europe and the United States.
Compared to the cancer of other organs, the removal of the cancerous breast not only means the removal of the lesion, but also symbolizes the partial cutting of the female identity. The national appreciation for Angelina? Jolie’s appreciation for her inner strength comes from her courage to give up her breasts, a symbol of female existence, but the more admiration she gets, the more anxiety permeates the back of it.
If the removal of the mammary gland is the removal of a symbol of female identity and self-esteem, the opposite, breast enlargement, is the spontaneous addition of a woman’s own sex symbol. According to recent statistics from the International Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, the Chinese rank fifth in the number of people who have undergone this procedure to increase the curves of their bodies by filling them with foreign bodies. While the Chinese are anxious about the health of their breasts, they are equally anxious about the imperfection of their curves. In the public media, the deep cleavage is named “career line” and the image term, originally from the entertainment industry, has gradually spread to the general workplace by exposing cleavage for exposure. Surrounded by career lines and breast enlargement advertisements, people are more and more beginning to beg for their body curves.
Aesthetic Anxiety
Women’s dissatisfaction with their lines and anxiety about breast health has a profound social premise – that breasts can be openly talked about and exhibited as beautiful. The present is probably the most fully liberated era for breasts in China in thousands of years. Shapewear, plastic surgery, bikinis and deep-V dresses are everywhere, fuelling the public’s desire to gaze at breasts. And the breasts were closed to the public for only a few short decades.
In the 1950s, the cheongsam made a sad end, and was instantly replaced by the wide labor and cadre uniforms. Women’s clothes and pants at that time were no different from men’s, and their purpose was to cover and wrap rather than to expose and emphasize the curves of the body. In the images of that time, only the enemy women had pink skin and delicate lines. In the context of the time, women’s lingerie became an inherently sinful existence.
As the famous fashion designer Dior said, “If there were no shapely lingerie, there would be no clothing industry.” Lingerie for women’s breast characteristics originated in Europe in the early 14th century, and after years of evolution, the real modern sense of the bra was finally born in 1907. From World War I to the 1970s, the West experienced several breast-flattening and breast-enhancing trends, and the bra became an important symbol of these movements. 1960s, women began to desire more political and social freedom, and feminine accessories such as the bra became a representative of repression, and women’s groups burned underwear to make their political stand.
At the same time, Chinese women were also unable to own bras, and all meanings of breasts other than breastfeeding were outlawed. It was not until the 1980s that lingerie began to diversify in China. The Western media began to cry out “Chinese women finally have breasts”.
In August 1985, the national sports community was confronted with a thorny issue when the National Sports Commission mandated that female athletes competing in the Fourth National Bodybuilding Competition must wear three-point swimsuits in order to comply with international standards. Many big city delegations discussed and studied and asked for reports again and again, but none dared to break through this clothing ban, and four female athletes trained by Xiong Guohui, a sports bodybuilding professional from Guangdong Province, ended up being the first women in China to appear on stage in three-point swimsuits. The bikini, a swimsuit named after the nuclear test island, finally landed in China. Women’s breasts were allowed to see the light of day on the grounds of sport and fitness. Prior to this, the mural “Water Splashing Festival” at the capital airport had caused great controversy because of the naked bodies.
Since the 1980s, breasts have been gradually desensitized in China, moving from being a wrapped organ to an aesthetic object open to public scrutiny. This is a double liberation of the body and morality. In the context of China’s social transformation, the liberation of the body is an important indicator of the plurality of social thought. Soon, like everything else, the breasts were inescapably drawn into the frenzy of consumerism, gradually evolving into a unique landscape full of desire.
Consumer Anxiety
Few people would have successfully predicted that auto shows would become the biggest showcase for the display of breasts. What started out as a showcase for new technology and cool design has quickly turned into a sensational breast show in China.
People are happier to focus on the breasts of model cars than on the mobility tools they hope to sell. This is a triumph of consumerism. In the book “The History of Breasts”, author Marilyn Aarons quotes a French physician. Yaron quotes a French physician who says, “You can promote anything with your breasts.
In a sea of silicone and flesh, a woman named Lulu Dry emerges. People were happy to take pictures of her half-naked in a crowded scene, exposing her breasts in such a public and legitimate setting, releasing a morbid psychological orgy in a social context that has always been “unkind” to sex.
The actresses’ exposure of their career line has triggered a psychological oppression for ordinary women under the magnifying effect of the media. The plastic surgery declaration of “it’s good to be a woman” and the advertising slogans of various magic underwear have become a medium to reveal the aesthetic anxiety of women’s breasts. “Sexiness” seems to be a certain obligation for contemporary women. Breast enlargement and weight loss together have become the most considered body transformation projects for women on a daily basis.
The Japanese AV actress Aoi Aoi came to China, cleverly bypassing her own industry and using the raw capital she built with her flesh to kill the reality of China from the hidden hard drive, signing an unspoken and hidden business agreement. In Chinese society, breasts have undergone different fates of being concealed, liberated and consumed, carrying in themselves a huge change in public mentality and social thinking, completing the semantic transformation from body organ to psychological landscape.