The human body is never only biological. It is social, political, and cultural. Many feminist theorists term it as “body politics” — the way society writes rules, judgments, and meanings onto our physical selves. For women, this inscription becomes most violent during illness, when the body is already in crisis and society demands it perform health, beauty, and silence at the same time or remain secluded.
Last year, I watched my aunt become a battleground and undergo treatment for breast cancer. Chemotherapy took her hair and gave her chilly winter in return – white, thin, almost gone, the long black locks. The surgeons used their necessary scissors on her body. One breast got removed. At that crucial time when her body was fighting to survive, she was asked to survive something else: the gaze and commentary of people around her. So many questions- “Will your hair grow back?” “You look so fat.” “Are you sure it won’t come back?” Questions disguised as concern cut her deeper than a scalpel. Why must a woman be cut twice? Once by doctors, when she is already at the edge of herself. And again by the so-called educated folks with stares, whispers, and pity that humiliates to the bone. Why does society want to measure her worth by wholeness?
Unfortunately this year, the scalpel found me as a target. I underwent openheart surgery. My chest opened like a book no one was meant to read. A long, thin line, a permanent scar now runs down the center of me, a noticeable proof that I was broken and mended. I am no more whole. Not in body. Not in mind. I am too raw to build armor. Physically or emotionally weak in last few months! And consequently the advice was shot at me from different directions: “Wear round neck t-shirts or kurtis so the scar isn’t visible to others.” “Hide it up with your duppatta.” But why should I hide what kept me alive? This scar is not a mistake. It is not shame. It is the signature of Susan Bordo, an American philosopher, working in contemporary cultural studies, with an immensely knowledgeable feminist perspective, claims in her book Unbearable Weight that women’s bodies are culturally constructed as “ornamental surfaces.” When illness disrupts that surface, women are expected to restore it immediately – with wigs, prosthetics, and concealing clothes. To refuse is to be seen as bold and rebellious. survival written on my skin. I have made peace with it. I have named it part of me. So why can’t the world do the same? Why must we, as women, constantly edit ourselves for other people’s comfort? Trim our hair, cover our scars, soften our pain, smile through the cutting. Our body is not an apology. It is a record of illness, surgery, healing and love.
The French philosopher Michel Foucault said that the body is a site of power. In Discipline and Punish, he writes that institutions such as hospitals, schools, media carve norms on bodies to make them submissive and acceptable to society. Illness interrupts this submissiveness. A bald head, a missing breast, a surgical scar refuses the cultural script of the “perfect” female body. In her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” British Film theorist Laura Mulvey identified it as the “male gaze” wherein “women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact” but such ill women regrettably can’t fit in the parameters. Society responds to this illness and not having “perfect” body by trying to correct it with language, with shame, with advice to hide. American psychiatrist and medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman calls illness a “social experience” as much as a biological one. He notes that patients do not only suffer disease; they suffer “the social meanings attached to disease”. For women with breast cancer, that meaning is tied to femininity, sexuality, and motherhood. For women with cardiac scars, it is tied to fragility and the fear of being seen as “damaged.”
In the last decade, women in public life have begun to refuse this silence. American actress and filmmaker, Angelina Jolie, who underwent a preventive double mastectomy, expressed about her medical choice: “I do not feel any less of a woman. I feel empowered that I made a strong choice for myself and my family.” She turned a private surgery into a public statement of agency. Sonali Bendre, a veteran Indian Actress who was diagnosed with metastatic cancer, posted on her Instagram from the hospital: “This is what going through treatment looks like. Bald and beautiful.” By sharing her baldness publicly, she be edited for public comfort. If we talk about Indian cinema, it has long been uncomfortable with the “imperfect” female body. In films like Anand and Kal Ho Naa Ho, the dying woman is made beautiful, sacrificial, and silent. Her pain is aesthetic. Her body is never shown as surgical, bald, or scarred. The message is clear that suffering must look graceful. But this began to change with films like Margarita with a Straw and Chhalaang where disability and difference are shown without pity. Tahira Kashyap’s short film Toffee directly addresses body image after cancer. challenged the stigma that hair equals femininity. Breast cancer survivor and singer, Sheryl Crow said- “The scar is part of my story. I’m not hiding it. I’m proud of it.” Tahira Kashyap, writer and director, who was diagnosed with Stage 0 breast cancer, posted a photo on her Instagram account of her mastectomy scar: “The scar is a reminder of how strong I am. And I’m not ashamed of it.” She also spoke openly about chemotherapy, hair loss, and depression, breaking Bollywood’s culture of secrecy. In her memoir Close to the Bone, Lisa Ray, actress and cancer survivor, documented – “Cancer taught me that the body is not a temple to be worshipped. It is a house we live in, and sometimes it needs repair.” Manisha Koirala, Bollywood actress, who survived ovarian cancer, told in an interview- “I lost my hair, I lost weight, but I did not lose myself. Illness gave me a new relationship with my body.” These courageous women did what Foucault could not imagine; they took control of the narrative. By showing baldness, scars, and hospital rooms, they refused to remain silent and let the body.
However, television and advertisements still sell fairness creams, hair oils, and “post-surgery” shapewear. The message persists – a woman’s value is in her ability to look untouched. Mulvey argued in the regard that the female body on screen is made “to-belooked-at.” When that body is marked by illness, the gaze turns to disgust or pity. Celebrity disclosures disrupt that gaze. When Sonali Bendre posted her bald photo from New York hospital, she forced millions to look at cancer without melodrama.
Am I no longer part of this world? Have I fallen out of the category of “alive” and therefore out of the category called “useful” just because a surgeon drew a line down the center of me? Must I now live in permanent seclusion because my body still carries proof of life? Don’t retire me. I’m not done. I have been revived. And that scar is not a reason to disappear. Now I am a woman with a mended heart and a mind that still wants to build, create, and earn.
Even surgeons with altered perspective are rethinking language. Dr. Susan Love, pioneer of breast cancer research, deliberated: “We need to stop talking about ‘saving the breast’ and start talking about saving the woman.” Her words shift the focus from aesthetics to life. Cardiac surgeons also echo the same. Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, renowned cardiac surgeon, has said: “A scar on the chest is the signature of life. It means someone fought and won. Patients should wear it with pride.” This shift matters. When medical professionals name the scar as victory instead of defect, they give patients courage and language to resist shame and body politics. The advice or demand to “cover the scar” may seem a concern about health at surface level but it is about comfort, other people’s comfort. It is body politics in its simplest form to make the abnormal invisible so the normal can continue undisturbed. But illness teaches a different lesson. The body after surgery is not less. It is more. It carries evidence of pain, of medicine, of care, of survival. To hide it is to erase that story, to suppress the individuality.
How it suppresses your individuality, I tell you, last week a neighbor suggested I shouldn’t take up a job and should rest lifelong. Another such day, an ex-colleague called and said it in softer and disturbing tone, “Now you should just stay home. Permanently.” The word ‘permanently’ stayed in my chest longer than the stitches did and left me wondering – Are they scared of my scar? Are people uncomfortable seeing a body that has been opened and closed? Body politics will not change until we stop asking women to apologize for their survival. Doctors can heal tissue. Only society can heal stigma. Moreover that, acceptance begins at home, in the mirror, before it can be demanded from the world. Individual courage is not enough. Kleinman says in the regard, “healing requires community, not just cure.” Schools and workplaces need awareness modules on “illness etiquette.” Hospitals must go beyond treatment. Support groups and programs should help women see others with scars and baldness, reducing isolation. Bollywood and OTT platforms must show post-surgical bodies without tragedy music. Writers should portray the bald or scarred woman as their protagonists, not the patients, how author Rochelle Potkar has depicted the character of Munika, a breast cancer survivor in her short story ‘The Arithmetic of Breasts’. The world must learn to read a woman’s body without dodging, and with hair loss, with scars, and with all the history written on its skin.
(Dr. Shalini Yadav is a Professor, Writer and Columnist from Jaipur, Rajasthan.)