Screw You Cancer, by Sáshenka Gutiérrez
Unique reference from the Jury of the 26th edition of the Luis Valtueña International Humanitarian Photography Award of Médicos del Mundo.
The series informs the story of Sandra Monroy, a 36-year-old breast cancer survivor. She lost her breasts to the disease, which was detected in early 2021. After the diagnosis, physicians discussed to Sandra that a double mastectomy was needed since, although the cancer was only in the best breast, if she kept the left breast, there was a 50 to 60 percent chance of the illness returning.
The physicians informed her that her breasts might be rebuilded, however that implied a minimum of 2 operations in the next three years, and one more intervention if she chose nipple restoration. She would have to duplicate that procedure at least every 10 years to replace the implants. Reconstruction is not an easy process; lots of women have chosen to live without breasts, as well as the challenges, physical, psychological, and social, that featured the choice.
Sandra went into surgery on July 5, 2021; she decided not to rebuild her breasts and developed the advocacy platform: “Screw You Cancer”, where she supports females breast cancer survivors who go through some kind of mastectomy and choose not to have breast reconstruction.
She chose to live without breasts in a system that relates breasts with femininity, to provide her body a brand-new significance and therefore work out among the very first rights as a lady which is liberty over her body, putting the oncological prior to the aesthetic: “Breasts are not what makes us women.”
Sandra was armored by this situation, and today she honestly reveals her scars to tell other females, not just those who have gone through this terrible illness, that breasts, a size or a measurement do not specify who you are, due to the fact that beauty surpasses the requirements that society has developed. We must all feel equally proud of who we are and how we are.
Mexico City, Mexico, 2021.