Community and the Public Body in Breast Cancer Media Activism

Cartwright, Lisa

doi:10.4324/9780203988374-1

Cited by 3 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…A complex and multidimensional "breast cancer culture" 3 (Cartwright, 1998;King, 2006;Saywell et al, 2000) has materialized within a larger "biomedicalization healthscape 4 " (Clarke, 2010) where biomedicine has proliferated into all aspects of mass culture. Mass media in particular have played a central role in creating new visibilities for biomedicine in popular culture, and creating new subjectivities through discourses of health, illness and disease (Clarke, et al, 2010).…”

Section: Online Media Biomedicalization and Breast Cancer Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This breast cancer "survivor" culture has been further characterized by a recent proliferation of breast cancer expert and popular health websites, forums, support groups, social media sites, blogs and newsletters in online spaces (Bell, 2006;Cartwright, 1998;Ehrenreich, 2001;Pitts, 2001Pitts, , 2004 where women can research and become informed about diagnoses and treatments. Through gathering information and seeking advice online, women are increasingly delegated as responsible for the management of their illness and their survival (Clarke et al, 2010;King, 2006;Rose, 2001).…”

Section: Online Media Biomedicalization and Breast Cancer Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As such, it is important to consider the ways tattooing practices in relation to breast cancer are marketed toward a niche population in the pursuit of perfection (Hogle, 2006). Yet, online media not only produce biomedicalized subjects but also concurrently operate as crucial sites for breast cancer activism and advocacy (Cartwright, 1998;Orgad, 2005). In fact processes of biomedicalization are never completely uniform; they are simultaneously characterized by active negotiations, refusals of engagements and resistances (Clarke et al, 2010).…”

Section: Online Media Biomedicalization and Breast Cancer Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…) Online media have been pivotal in sanitizing tattooing practices and distancing them from social deviance (DeMello, 1995b;DeMello, 2000;Neville, 2005) and they have provided resources for health and illness (Clarke et al, 2010). The latter is particularly true in relation to breast cancer, where women are encouraged to take responsibility for their health by making informed decisions (Bryson & Stacey, 2013;Cartwright, 1998;Orgad, 2005;Pitts, 2001Pitts, , 2004Sharf, 1997).This paper therefore concentrates on how practices of tattooing are situated into online biomedicalized discourses where they function as techniques of self-care (Foucault, 1986;Polzer, 2010) for breast cancer 'survivors' to return to a sense of wellbeing after various surgeries and medical interventions.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This study, therefore, focuses on the ways that tattooed bodies are positioned in relation to breast cancer within biomedicalized discourses and the types of relations and assemblages that emerge from those intersections (Clarke, 2010;Deleuze & Guattari, 1980;Puar, 2012). At the same time, online media can operate as sites for breast cancer activism in the creation of new publics (Cartwright, 1998;Orgad, 2005) wherein women can retell the stories of their bodies through new practices of inscription in ways that disrupt medicalized and masculinist reconstruction narratives. This essay will therefore also examine online media's potential for challenging and resisting biomedicalized discourses and practices through the creation of these new bodily assemblages (Puar, 2012).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Networked Scars: Tattooed Bodies after Breast Cancer

Klein

2018

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This paper investigates the growing trend of mastectomy tattoos as an alternative to reconstruction and their implication on the (de)regulation of women's bodies in the digital context. I explore how tattoos are incorporated into a "breast cancer culture" (King, 2010) as a form of self-care in the recreation of areola pigmentation after breast reconstructive surgery and in cosmetic masking of post-operative mastectomy scars. I am concerned with how online discourses of tattooing practices are drawing women's bodies into an emergent 'biopolitics' (Foucault, 1990; Rose, 2001), a productive type of power concerned with the risk management of a 'biomedicalized subject' where women are encouraged to care for their health through informed decisions via online media (Pitts, 2004) and through consumption and beautification techniques in line with normative femininity (King, 2006). Yet, online media can potentially operate as a site for the creation of new publics wherein women can retell the stories of their bodies through new practices of inscription outside of medicalized and masculinist reconstruction narratives. I perform a discourse analysis of Canadian expert and popular discourses in health websites, plastic surgery and cosmetic service websites, tattoo parlour websites and in social media, including P.ink, (an organization that supports mastectomy tattoos). I argue that within digital media competing medical, pop cultural and feminist narratives intersect in ways that can contribute to an "awkward feminist politics" (Smith-Prei & Stehle, 2016) where women's hybridized medical, digital, tattooed bodies can operate as material obstacles to normative correlations between health, femininity and sexuality.

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Section: Online Media Biomedicalization and Breast Cancer Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Online Media Biomedicalization and Breast Cancer Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Online Media Biomedicalization and Breast Cancer Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Networked Scars: Tattooed Bodies after Breast Cancer

Klein

2018

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‘Look at me!’ Post-mastectomy transformative politics

Davis

2022

European Journal of Women's Studies

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Breast cancer received little attention until the 1990s when women began to criticize the lack of public awareness as well as research funding. Breast cancer activism emerged across the globe, ranging from feminist grass-roots movements, to initiatives by health organizations to corporate activities, the most famous being Pink Ribbon. Feminists have been critical of Pink Ribbon, decrying what they call the ‘pink-washing’ of breast cancer through consumerism and the insistence that breast cancer survivors should ‘look good in order to feel good’. In this article, I explore activism that makes breast cancer visible without silencing its traumas. This activism takes the form of artistic projects – fashion, art, photography, and other forms of aesthetic expression. Drawing upon the work of the queer theorist Dina Georgis, I ultimately turn to the SCAR Project as example of a ‘better story’ about living with the post-mastectomy body and show how it can inspire a transformative feminist politics of the body.

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Selfies of Ill Health: Online Autopathographic Photography and the Dramaturgy of the Everyday

Tembeck

2016

Social Media + Society

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This article offers a preliminary investigation into what I term "selfies of ill health" and traces the expansion of the autopathographic genre in visual media from professional art photography to the vernacular selfie in recent years. In this context, the word autopathography is used to describe self-representational practices that offer a first-person perspective on experiences of illness or hospitalization. I first situate the genre by identifying several typologies of selfies of ill health, including diagnostic selfies, cautionary selfies, and treatment impact selfies. I then focus on the forms of identity performance that selfies, and selfies of ill health in particular, deploy. I argue that the performative qualities of certain selfies of ill health overlap with salient characteristics of autopathographic practice in the arts. Using Karolyn Gehrig's #HospitalGlam series as a case study, I examine how autopathographic selfies can also construct a politicized dramaturgy of the lived body, notably by enabling individuals like Gehrig to "come out" as being invisibly ill. I conclude that the dramaturgical thrust of such autopathographic imagery is to convey both the centrality of medical experiences in subjects' lives and their specific desire to be publicly identified as persons living with illness. In light of this, although selfies of ill health may have opened up new avenues for autopathographic practice thanks to the affordances of social media, their communicative intents remain consistent with those of earlier forms of autopathographic photography.

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Community and the Public Body in Breast Cancer Media Activism

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Networked Scars: Tattooed Bodies after Breast Cancer

Networked Scars: Tattooed Bodies after Breast Cancer

‘Look at me!’ Post-mastectomy transformative politics

Selfies of Ill Health: Online Autopathographic Photography and the Dramaturgy of the Everyday

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