Prosthetic fantasies: loss, recovery, and the marketing of wholeness after breast cancer

Abstract

In this paper, I show that the breast prosthesis is marketed as a device that aligns the post-surgical body with wellness and normalcy. Thus, the prosthesis is made to be a point of convergence where the phenomenological experience of the self and materiality of the body appear to be in harmony. What follows is an examination of the meanings women attribute to their mastectomy and the ways they successfully and unsuccessfully attempt to integrate the prosthesis into their sense of self and daily life; how issues of body image are linked to femininity and identity in information booklets given to women during their illness; how these texts connect emotional and physical recovery to restoring breast shape; and, finally, the powerful influence of prostheses manufacturers who link traditional notions of how the female body should look and act with recovery from a breast cancer crisis. Advertisements for prostheses use notions of liberation and completeness and naturalness, not only to sell the usefulness of their devices but also to market certain understandings and meanings of the post-surgical body. However, by examining women's daily practices of prosthesis wearing, I discuss the slippages that emerge between the marketing and experience of the prosthesis.

Keywords:

• breast cancer recovery
• mastectomy
• performance
• self
• gender
• prosthesis