For Breast Cancer Research, Survivors And Others Turn Their Bodies Into Art

The event, called “The Big Reveal,” is to raise funding for breast cancer research, and it questions the idea of an “ideal female form”  by featuring women naked in art in a way that’s pretty different from what you’d usually find in art museums.

Listen to the audio version of this story.

If you attend the opening, you’ll find photographs of women’s torsos – just their bare chest – painted with bright colors and designs. The women’s bodies are all different and so are their histories.

“We had women who were breast cancer survivors,” Barbara Lang, one of the event’s co-chairs, said. “Women who had double mastectomies, single mastectomies, reconstructive surgery.”

When Lang heard about this kind of art project, she said it immediately spoke to her. While the women’s backgrounds may vary, they all have something in common: They’re turning their bodies into a work of art.

“I just thought it was a beautiful idea,” she said, “because a lot of breast cancer survivors don’t feel good about themselves, and we want them to feel good about themselves.”

Lang said they weren’t sure at first how they would find enough women who would be willing to strip down and have their chests painted. But as soon as word got out, women started volunteering. So many, in fact, that they had to turn people away.

Sue Rothstein is one of the women who stepped forward to be a model. She herself is a breast cancer survivor. Shortly after she was diagnosed, her two sisters also learned that they had cancer.

“We were each painted, and it was certainly out of our comfort zone, not anything like what we had ever done before,” Rothstein said. “But it was a way for us to courageously express what had affected our family so seriously over the last six years ago.”

Surviving breast cancer can change a woman’s body in all different ways. Most women have scarring. Some have mastectomies and are able to reconstruct their breasts. Others are unable or don’t want to go through that process, and they no longer have breasts.

These changes can leave women – young and old – weighed down with concerns about their body image. So Rothstein thinks it’s important to show that a woman’s body can be beautiful with or without scars, with or without breasts. And she thinks this event can help do that.

“Here we have taken and made a woman, who may not have breasts that we would consider beautiful, and we have been able to make them beautiful,” she said. “Whatever a woman’s body is, should be beautiful to that person, but this is way to be out there in the community and showing bodies in a whole different way and making them beautiful. “

While getting your bare chest painted takes courage, Rothstein also pointed out that the project took some bravery for many of the artists involved too. Many weren’t professional painters. One artist usually worked with clay. And, even for those who did usually paint, almost none of them had painted on the human body before.  

That was the case for Susan Proctor.

“I ordered a manikin on eBay so I could practice,” Proctor said. “I had some idea, and then basically my idea just left. Each person was different, and I came out with three totally different paintings.”

She tried her best to accommodate each woman’s personality in her paintings. For example, one the of the women she worked with wanted lots of color. And so Proctor painted the woman’s chest in the style of Picasso.

Overall, as an artist, it was a challenge for Procter to paint a naked body, but she had personal reasons for participating.

“My mother was diagnosed several years ago with early stage breast cancer,” she said. “And I’ve had so many friends over the years and acquaintances who’ve been affected by breast cancer. So I would happily do anything to help.”

And that’s something that these women pointed out: All of the people who volunteered to make this art event happen, they didn’t just want to create art or have their body painted. They had a connection to breast cancer. Maybe their friend has been diagnosed. Or maybe it was their sister or their mother.

So, this Saturday, when they unveil the works of art – whether it’s the picture of the woman with a single mastectomy showing a forest scene or the photo of the model who had fireworks painted across her breasts – they hope people will think about the effects of breast cancer and perhaps consider the female body in a new way.

The women of Greater Atlanta Hadassah will be auctioning off these photographs to raise money for breast cancer research this Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Westside Cultural Arts Center. Find more information here.