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disease—shared with me by oncology nurses as well as by survivors—chemotherapy smoothes and tightens the skin and helps you lose weight, and, when your hair comes back it will be fuller, softer, easier to control, and perhaps a surprising new color. These may be myths, but for those willing to get with the prevailing program, opportunities for self-improvement abound. The American Cancer Society offers the “Look Good . . . Feel Better” program, “dedicated to teaching women cancer patients beauty techniques to help restore their appearance and self-image during cancer treatment.” Thirty thousand women participate a year, each copping a free make over and bag of makeup donated by the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association, the trade association of the cosmetics industry. As for that lost breast: after reconstruction, why not bring the other one up to speed? Of the more than fifty thousand mastectomy patients who opt for reconstruction each year, 17 percent go on, often at the urging of their plastic surgeons, to get additional surgery so that the remaining breast will “match” the more erect and perhaps larger new structure on the other side.

    Not everyone goes for cosmetic deceptions, and the question of wigs versus baldness, reconstruction versus undisguised scar, defines one of the few real disagreements in breast cancer culture. On the more avant-garde, upper-middle-class side, Mamm magazine—in which literary critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick served as a columnist—tends to favor the “natural” look. Here, mastectomy scars can be “sexy” and baldness something to celebrate. A cover story featured women who “looked upon their baldness not just as a loss, but also as an opportunity: to indulge their playful sides . . . to come in contact, in new ways, with their truest selves.” One woman decorated her scalp with temporary tattoos of peace signs, panthers, and frogs; another expressed herself with a shocking purple wig; a third reported that unadorned baldness made her feel “sensual, powerful, able to recreate myself with every new day.” But no hard feelings toward those who choose to hide their condition under wigs or scarves; it’s just a matter, Mamm tells us, of “different aesthetics.” Some go for pink ribbons; others will prefer the Ralph Lauren Pink Pony breast cancer motif. But everyone agrees that breast cancer is a chance for creative self-transformation—a make over opportunity, in fact.

    In the seamless world of breast cancer culture, where one Web site links to another—from personal narratives and grassroots endeavors to the glitzy level of corporate sponsors and celebrity spokespeople—cheerfulness is required, dissent a kind of treason. Within this tightly knit world, attitudes are subtly adjusted, doubters gently brought back to the fold. In The First Year of the Rest of Your Life , for example, each personal narrative is followed by a study question or tip designed to counter the slightest hint of negativity—and they are very slight hints indeed, since the collection includes no harridans, whiners, or feminist militants:

    Have you given yourself permission to acknowledge you have some anxiety or “blues” and to ask for help for your emotional well-being? . . .

    Is there an area in your life of unresolved internal conflict? Is there an area where you think you might want to do some “healthy mourning”? . . .

    Try keeping a list of the things you find “good about today.” 7

    As an experiment, I posted a statement on the [http://Komen.org] Komen.org message board, under the subject line “Angry,” briefly listing my complaints about the debilitating effects of chemotherapy, recalcitrant insurance companies, environmental carcinogens, and, most daringly, “sappy pink ribbons.” I received a few words of encouragement in my fight with the insurance company, which had taken the position that my biopsy was a kind of optional indulgence, but mostly a chorus