The S.C.A.R. Project—Surviving Cancer:

But Absolute? And Whose Reality?

Portraits: Emily

Constructing an alternative rhetoric

• “Breast cancer is not a pink ribbon.” • Visual rhetoric of shock vs central construct of

family and friends of Komen•

Visual Rhetoric of the Photographs

• Activate demanding reciprocity of direct interaction with viewer

• Female embodiment which resists containment within conventional and exclusionary physical standards of female display.

• Acts of “somatic cultural resistance” and “defiance” in face of disfiguring disease

Scar vs pink ribbon

• Incorporation of terms into narratives of women

• Reflects extent to which dominant ideology of project is reflected in way they have come to see themselves and their disease

Challenge to representational practices

• Normative eroticized breast with scarred chest• Jay’s focus is on what is not there• Women out of conformity with traditional

standards yet not defeminized or desexualized• Jay’s manipulation of cultural conventions

surrounding female display

New Meaning to post mastectomy bodies

• Teach women what to expect• Enlarge cultural imaginary• Provide alternative that equates breasts with

central construct in definition of womanhood• Expands and enlarges cultural conversations

around issues of femininity, beauty, and female embodiment

Alternative to Komen

• Reifies what is generally hidden• Re vises understanding of post mastectomy

bodies• Wake up call to young women• Constructs form of emboidiment that assigns

new meaning to scars• Stigma becomes source of empowerment and

beauty