Tattooists Help Breast Cancer Survivors Transform Disfiguring Scars Into Powerful Art Jessica Firger - Newsweek
go to original March 20, 2017

P.ink Day / Beautiful Mastectomy Tattoos (PersonalInkProject)

For most of her life, Heather Lee didn’t dwell on the appearance of her breasts. They were simply an occasionally functional part of her anatomy; they fed her four children as newborns and required occasional shopping for sartorial support. But after being diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2015 and undergoing a double mastectomy, the 40-year-old recently divorced mother feared she’d be left with breasts that resembled “overripe avocados.”

“The way I explained it to my friends is when I looked in the mirror I didn’t want to think, OK, those look almost like boobs,” says Lee, a lawyer in Birmingham, Alabama. “I wanted to look in the mirror and think, I’m a badass.”

Lee elected to have both breasts surgically removed - one prophylactically - in order to lower her risk for cancer recurrence, as well as to avoid taking Tamoxifen for 10 years, a drug infamous for menopausal-like side effects that can greatly diminish a woman’s quality of life after cancer. The surgeon also told her a double mastectomy would mean “better symmetry,” she says. But nipple-sparing surgery wasn’t an option for Lee. The margins of her breast biopsy showed malignant cells were near the edge, so preserving some of the tissue might make it more likely that the cancer could return. That meant saving the nipples and areolas for reconstruction - a now relatively common practice - would be too risky.

Lee says she opted for breast implants that would “look normal in clothes and a swimsuit.” But she didn’t return for the follow-up procedure, when a cosmetic surgeon manipulates the skin on the breast mounds to create the appearance of nipples. She also skipped the medical tattoos, the final touch in breast reconstruction to give pigment to the nipple area and create the appearance of areolas. Fake nipples didn’t appeal to Lee, and a little Googling prompted her to decide she wanted real ink.

Most breast cancer patients who undergo a mastectomy are told by their doctors that they have just two options once treatment and surgery are completed: reconstruction or no reconstruction. But when Lee happened upon David Allen, a Chicago-based tattoo artist, she found a third: mastectomy tattoos. Allen, who has developed an almost cult-like following among breast cancer survivors, had an entire page on his website filled with photos of women’s breasts covered with scar-concealing tattoos. He’s one of just a handful of tattoo artists in the U.S. helping women reclaim their bodies and their lives after breast cancer in a less conventional and less medicalized way.

Many people get tattoos to mark a milestone: the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, an anniversary and, of course, the end of a serious and life-threatening illness. But for breast cancer survivors, mastectomy tattoos can be far more powerful. They not only symbolize an escape from death, but also conceal scars and minimize the appearance of disfigurement. If done well, they can make looking in the mirror a positive experience once again, or at least more bearable.

Read the rest at Newsweek

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