Gender, loss, and the erosion of bodily capital: A study with women diagnosed with late stage breast cancer

ABSTRACT

To learn about the gendered experience of bodily loss, this paper analyzes interviews with women diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer (N = 32). Across the interviews, we find that specific bodily sites – hair, breast(s), thinness – and the gender norms associated with these sites do not loosen their grip near the end of life, but rather constitute meaningful sites of loss. Interviews demonstrate that when women lose a valued physical characteristic they also feel the loss of gendered statuses associated with that aspect of the body. We theorize the resulting emotional experience as positionality grief, or sorrow over an injured sense of self and that is tied to a sense of lowered place on social hierarchies. For feminist scholars, our study links women’s complex desires with their particular forms of embodiment that delimit spaces of possibility in the social world. For Bourdieusian scholars, our study calls attention to the importance of focusing not just on the acquisition, but the loss of embodied capital in social life. The implications of these bodily changes, therefore, structure how women grapple with gender and sexuality over the course of their lives.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Sarah Diefendorf, Judy Howard, Elise Paradis, Mary Nell Trautner, and members of the 2019 IAS C&F working group for helpful comments. Thanks to Sophie Allen for help in preparing the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Cancer treatment mimics aging in that both draw people away from characteristics associated with youth, like a slender and toned figure, smooth skin, and colorful hair (Sinding and Gray; Clarke and Griffin). Cancer and its treatments drain energy, cause cognitive difficulties (e.g. “chemo-brain” resembles “senior moments”), can induce frailty, and raise the specter of the end of life.

² Proper recovery means recovery of the breast; some women report that they cannot return to normalcy after a mastectomy without reconstructive surgery (Crompvoets). Others report feeling pressured to have unwanted reconstructive surgery (Rubin and Tannenbaum; Coll-Planas and Visa; Brown and McElroy). Some who chose not to have reconstructive surgery may see that choice as an empowering act of resistance against heteronormativity and patriarchy (La et al.).

³ Researchers contacted seventy-three patients by phone to schedule an interview that coincided with a future oncology appointment. Of these, sixteen were not scheduled to be in the clinic in the four months when interviews were scheduled, fourteen declined, seven could not be reached after three attempts and were considered a passive decline, and four were in hospice or deceased.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants awarded to Sara McClelland from the Comprehensive Cancer Center, Cancer Research Committee, University of Michigan, and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan.