Killer Butt
People say that writing a book is like having a baby. I was trying to do both at once: While I was nursing Skye with one boob, changing her diapers, and getting blood tests and other scans to make sure my cancer hadn’t returned, I was also setting my alarm clock for four A.M. to work on my book. I was obsessed with nurturing my babies: Skye and my book.
At my book party, five-year-old Skye was like a mini-me, wearing the exact same outfit that I was—her little jeans had a stretchy back, her Betsey Johnson T-shirt was a scaled-down version of mine that I’d had made at the tailor, and we both had bright pink feather boas.
I wanted to give hope to other women, but maybe more importantly I wanted to inform them. Especially young women, because I was still in shock over what had happened to me at only twenty-seven with no known family history. I had thought that for me to get breast cancer, my mom had to have had it. I had thought I had to be at least forty. Probably fifty, sixty, or seventy. I was a journalist, working at ABC News, pitching medical stories, and I still didn’t know the basic facts about breast cancer: Most women who get breast cancer don’t have a family history, and women in their twenties and thirties can get it too—and are often misdiagnosed because they’re told they are “too young.”
Lipstick was a big part of my story. The book was even titled Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy. It was published in 2004. When I held the first book in my hand, I thought that I had written the book I’d needed to read when I was diagnosed: I wanted someone to tell me the truth about having a mastectomy, about chemo, about reconstruction, or that losing a breast could mean losing a nipple too. Right after my reconstruction surgery, my doctors asked me to do a show-and-tell with women all over New York City, so they could see what my reconstructed breast looked like in a bra; I let the women touch my breast to see what it felt like too. Writing my book was a big overshare—a way to help even more women get through it.
It was the morning of my first official book signing, different from my book party, which was just for friends and family. I was obsessing about what to wear over my Spanx. What do authors wear to book signings? I wanted to look like my author photo, but it was severely airbrushed. I looked nothing like the woman in the photo: wind-blown raven hair, eyes that sparkled without a hint of exhaustion, and perfectly flawless skin. I had worked so hard to make my book authentic, and my cover photo was blowing it. The usual me was in a greasy ponytail, with a touch of adult acne, and wearing eye concealer that clashed with my actual skin tone.
It wasn’t that easy, wearing that Spanx. First, I had to get it on. There was panting and bucking and first I got into one leg, and then I almost toppled over but pulled up the other leg. The horizon was in front of me and all I had to do was get the Spanx over my butt. I lay down on the bed, breathed in and pulled, then jumped off the bed squatting and wobbling like a penguin. I then did a modified rain dance to hike it fully over my hips. It got stuck on my kidney, or my liver. Can Spanx do organ damage? When I finally got it over my last little C-section hump I wondered: Whom exactly was I putting this Spanx on for? Why did I need to look smoother, smaller, or better for someone else? I mean, I knew I was wearing the Spanx. My husband, Tyler, knew I was wearing Spanx, so wasn’t it really a bit disingenuous? Would someone like my book better because of the Spanx?
I hurt a finger on my right hand, my signing hand, getting into that Spanx. I had imagined how gracefully an author might autograph her book at her first signing, and exactly the curly G I wanted to make in my name, and now my finger was pounding and felt sprained. How could I sign all those books? Was it a sign about losing my self-respect in the process?
The Spanx had one last little roar left: It rolled down when I exhaled, and my stomach popped over it. Me versus Spanx. Spanx, first round.
I had been told that I would be speaking to seven hundred women at Women’s Health and Fitness Expo at the Javits Center. Seven hundred people! I didn’t know that many people. At Javits, on my way down the escalator to my room, I saw different ads for different seminars, all relating to the “wellness” theme. Women attending the programs could choose either my seminar or another seminar being held at the same time. I was scheduled for 4:00 P.M. It was 3:50. The media escort had told me they were expecting full capacity. Possible overflow! I tried to muster my courage. I reminded myself that I had won the Optimist Award in eleventh grade. I had to try to smile like the book jacket and pretend I really felt like an author.
And then I saw the competition. Well, actually, I saw her sign first: KILLER BUTT! Thank goodness I had worn a Spanx. I knew that women at this convention would be taking their bodies seriously, but I’d never dreamed there’d be a class called “KILLER BUTT!” I knew about core, crunches, squats, but how cool that there was a specific class about how to get a KILLER BUTT!, all caps with an exclamation point. There was a video called Buns of Steel, but something about the “KILLER BUTT!” was so in-your-face, so intimidating, and so serious. As if after the class the instructor’s butt might actually kill someone.
I wasn’t the only woman who was intrigued. As the escalator continued down, I kept twisting my neck to watch the video loop that was playing next to the KILLER BUTT! sign. A line of women watched the video outside the room, and there was quite a bit of commotion inside the room too.
I tripped over the bottom landing of the escalator. I should have been headed to my convention room, but I couldn’t help walking toward the “KILLER BUTT!” room. The instructor was wearing Lycra, and her goods matched her product. It was round, smooth, firm, and did this strange thing where it seemed to lift up, as if her behind were wearing a push-up bra.
For only $19.99 it could be yours.
Everyone knows breasts and butts rule, but living with one boob, you know it more. Why are there breastaurants named Hooters? I know the chicken wings are good, but . . . And why is there a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition? Why is there a Victoria’s Secret “fashion” show? Why did Janet Jackson’s nipple-flash launch an FCC investigation? I don’t have a nipple anymore. I felt disenfranchised somehow, and “KILLER BUTT!” was hitting the head of my nail of insecurity.
I had a message of hope and courage, but women had their choice of presentations, and I was worried that “KILLER BUTT!” would win. To tell the truth, it killed me to miss “KILLER BUTT!”
I checked my watch: 3:56. I was on at four o’clock; I had to get to my room to greet my peeps.
As I approached my room, there was no one outside waiting to greet me. No line. No matter. My crowd must be inside, wanting to get the good seats. My crowd was clearly more erudite, more civilized, more cultivated and calm and not fawning over a butt video. My crowd wanted to hear about a triumph of life, about the act of finding courage, about being scared of dying but somehow going forward. I took a very deep sort of yoga breath because we were at the Women’s Health and Fitness Expo, and walked into my room. My debut moment of authorness.
Rows and rows and rows of white chairs, without a butt in sight.
I instantly remembered every birthday party I was never invited to, every girl who excluded me, every boy who didn’t return a crush. It had to be a mistake. I must have the wrong time and wrong room. I ran out and checked the program again; I looked at the number outside my room to see if it matched. It matched; there was no mistake. This was my room, and I was alone in it. This is what emptiness looks like, rows and rows of chairs with no one in them.
Emptiness feels like no one cares.
Emptiness sounds like silence, and makes any other insignificant noise loud. I could hear the buzzing of the air conditioner system.
I had two compelling thoughts. One: Run up the escalator and pretend I had never come to the book signing, that I’d never tried to be an author. Two: Attend and try to blend in at “KILLER BUTT!” But what if someone in “KILLER BUTT!” saw me and knew I was the author supposed to be giving a lecture about my new book during the same time period? Impossible, I looked nothing like my book jacket.
I blinked and stared hard at the room and the rows of white. The overhead lighting was bright and fluorescent. The room was freezing; I guess they thought all the bodies would have brought the temperature up. At the front of the room was the stage and a huge box of books. And a mic. And a podium. I saw the Sharpie I was supposed to use to sign the books for the people who never came. Should I go up onstage and give my speech anyway? To an empty room? No, I should go back home, be with my daughter. She’d cried when I’d left for this book event, when I told her she had to spend a couple of hours without me.
I was preparing to leave when I saw her—the only woman in the audience. All the way in the back of the room, in the last seat.
My first instinct was to run away. Maybe she would never guess that I was the author. But I took a deep breath, and I did a walk of shame to my lone audience member. Is one even an audience? How should I handle this? I wasn’t quite sure of book-signing etiquette. She wasn’t even wearing lipstick. She looked as terrified as I felt, but she was the one sniffling and crying.
“My name is Geralyn Lucas. Believe it or not, I’m the author. I really don’t look anything like my book jacket.”
“My name is Janina,” she said. “My daughter told me you were going to be here. She sent me this flyer.” She held up a piece of paper, with fake me smiling. “I’m having my mastectomy on Thursday, but don’t think I can do it. My daughter said we should come. We took the bus four hours to meet you. From Reading, Pennsylvania.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t speak.
“That’s where I live.”
I started to cry, which I was sure wasn’t author-like behavior, but I couldn’t help myself, because she believed I could help her.
And then I realized something: I had an audience.
I hugged her and told her what I had planned to say on the podium:
“I put on lipstick for my mastectomy. Before that, I’d been a gloss girl. But I wanted to embolden myself, to have something that shouted out to everyone in the operating theater who I was. How brave I was, though I didn’t feel brave. When I woke up in the recovery room, my chest was so heavy, my mouth was dry, and I barely knew where I was. And the first thing the nurse said to me was, ‘Girl, what brand is that? I can’t believe it lasted through a six-hour surgery.’ She called the nurses in the ICU to tell them about it. The doctor took my breast; my lipstick lasted. That lipstick was my voice, my rage, my love, my strength. It was me. What I’m trying to say is, they took a body part, but I kept everything that mattered. You will too.”
Now I was close enough to be whispering in her ear. Side by side we kept talking, and we talked for two hours, until the Javits employees arrived to close down the room.
I hurried to the front and officially signed my first book. I couldn’t curl the G as much as I wanted to because my finger still hurt from the Spanx injury.
On Thursday, Janina’s daughter sent me photos of her mom on the gurney, clutching my book. What I couldn’t see was that she’d drawn a bright red lipstick heart around the breast she was about to lose. My lipstick had inspired her, but somehow she had inspired me more. God had played a funny trick on me. I had written my book with this premise: “If I reach one woman in her moment of suffering, I will feel it was worth it—all of the pain and suffering I had gone through.” And there she was: Janina. She told me later that I was the person who pulled her through, because she knew I had done it. The doctors hadn’t, the nurses hadn’t, but, Janina said, “If you could have a mastectomy, I could too.”
I had thought that the mastectomy would be my defining life moment, my moment of greatest courage. But now I knew there were more hurdles to jump. Hurdles that weren’t life or death, or in the OR, but absolutely terrifying, almost paralyzing in other ways—like having one desperately crying woman in the audience in a football-field-size room. They say that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, but I never understood that; I was always worried about the other 999.99 miles that came after it. I think that Janina helped me understand that first step. In sharing my private struggle, somehow the pain became bigger, and cracked me open. In all that I lost, I gained even more.
I went into the Javits Center room to sign my first book, and I expected to speak. Instead I had to listen. I entered the room defeated, but I left confident.
Then a funny thing happened.
Women across the country started wearing lipstick to their mastectomies, and they Facebooked their pictures to show me. One woman I met at another book signing told me that she’d worn a tiara to her mastectomy! How regal. And she was bald from her chemo. How did she keep it on? I have no idea. It was like the miracle of red lipstick lasting through the six-hour surgery.
Another woman wore stripper tassels to her mastectomy. Yes, she went in swinging. What could the doctor possibly have thought removing those tassels? My favorite: the woman who wore bright red, sexy panties! She fought with the nurse and demanded she be allowed to wear the red panties into the operating room. The nurse refused to bend the rules, and the lingerie-wearing mastectomy patient demanded to see the supervisor. She won. She told me that breaking the “no underwear” rule felt so rebellious, and gave her a sense of power in a powerless situation.
You go, girl.
Red lipstick became a symbol that these women connected with. A total state of mind. I knew what that lipstick had meant to me as I was being wheeled into the operating room; still, the impact of it on everyone else shocked me. And then I heard about the “Lipstick Theory.” One of the world’s pioneering cancer surgeons, the late William Cahan, MD, chief of surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, coined the term. According to Dr. Cahan, he was able to tell if a patient was improving while being treated for cancer if she started wearing her lipstick. “When a woman who is battling cancer starts to put on lipstick, she is on the road to recovery,” he said. “It is when the lipstick is on that she has adopted a ‘survivor’ frame of mind.”
Dr. Cahan served on the medical advisory board of a group called Look Good Feel Better, which helps women going through cancer treatments to learn to look like themselves again with makeup and hair-styling guidance offered by volunteer professionals. A tube of lipstick really does hold transformative powers. I attended Look Good Feel Better (LGFB) workshops and I saw the magic of the theory myself. Patients entered weary, tired, and looking sick, and left transformed. Yes, lipstick—and eyebrow pencils and wigs—were applied, but by the time they left, all the women in that room were changed by hope. They looked at themselves in their mirrors and smiled for the first time in a long time.
But the hope of red lipstick wasn’t just limited to cancer patients. I started hearing from women who had never had cancer but who finally believed, after reading my book, that they could wear lipstick. It touched something inside of them, and made them believe they could pull it off. Somehow my metamorphosis reminded them of their own journeys and the different wounds they had overcome.
And then the book was turned into a movie. A tall blonde with long, long legs played me, and her butt defined a whole new category of “KILLER.” Red lipstick was crazy powerful. When I arrived on the set of Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy in Toronto, the director’s assistant’s mom had bold red lips. They were, of course, the first thing I noticed. “I read your book last night,” she said, “and I had to go to the drugstore to buy a tube.”
“What?” I was genuinely stunned, since she looked like a longtime red-lipstick girl.
“My red lipstick means I’m finally able to let people look at me. I’m ready to get noticed.” When she smiled, her teeth looked so white. Another benefit of a red lip. “I just left an abusive relationship. I tried to stand it for so long. I want to put myself out there now.” Her red was so intentional. Just like my operating room shade. Red lipstick was about becoming the women we never thought we could be.
The spark set off more sparks. The rights to my book sold in Hungary, then Sweden, then Germany, Japan, and even Italy. I started getting booked for speeches, and the organizer would tell me that 700 women were going to come. Yeah, right, that’s a good one. Funny thing is, it was usually 765, and they would run out of tickets. Every time I heard from a woman on my website telling me that my book had helped her, I thought that maybe my mom had put her up to it. But my mom didn’t know anyone in Brazil!
A department store hosted a book signing for me, with a makeup artist to show women how to wear a bold red lip. A lot of women turned us down; they didn’t think they could wear red and were too scared. One woman protested, “I can only wear corals.” She was adamant.
“Who said?” The makeup artist was shaking his head, horrified.
“I just know. Red doesn’t work on me. Corals.”
The makeup artist gave up, and I wondered why that woman was stuck with that image of herself. And if she would ever see herself differently.
I will never forget the faces of the women I saw wearing lipstick for the first time that day at the department store. When they looked in the mirror, they didn’t recognize themselves. It was if they had finally appeared in their lives: bright, bold, look-at-me red just daring them to step up to it. Red lipstick was a little revolution inside their heads, a spark that let them see themselves differently.
Could any of this have happened without Janina? I think she started some sort of crazy chain reaction. Actually, she believed in me before I really believed in myself. After battling breast cancer, could I win the battle with myself? Janina showed up for me, and that prompted me to keep showing up. That connection is something I will never forget.
I wanted to be open to the universe, to trust it after being so let down by cancer, and I let the universe surprise and delight me. And there was another big shock on the way.