"No eyebrows. No eyelashes. When it rains the water will run straight down into my eyes," Catherine Lord wrote before her hair fell out during chemotherapy. Propelled into an involuntary performance piece occasioned by the diagnosis of breast cancer, Lord adopted the online persona of Her Baldness—an irascible, witty, polemical presence who speaks candidly about shame and fear to her listserv audience. While Lord suffers from unwanted isolation and loss of control as her treatment progresses, Her Baldness talks back to the society that stigmatizes bald women, not to mention middle-aged lesbians with a life-threatening disease. In this irreverent and moving memoir, Lord draws on the e-mail correspondence of Her Baldness to offer an unconventional look at life with breast cancer and the societal space occupied by the seriously ill. She photographs herself and the rooms in which she negotiates her disease. She details the clash of personalities in support groups, her ambivalence about Western medicine, her struggles to maintain her relationship with her partner, and her bemusement when she is mistaken for a "sir." She uses these experiences—common to the one-in-eight women who will be diagnosed at some point with breast cancer—to illuminate larger issues of gender signifiers, sexuality, and the construction of community.

Engaging with discussions surrounding the culture of disease, Disrupting Breast Cancer Narratives explores politically insistent narratives of illness. Resisting the optimism of pink ribbon culture, these stories use anger as a starting place to reframe cancer as a collective rather than an individual problem. Disrupting Breast Cancer Narratives discusses the ways emotion, gender, and sexuality, in relation to breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, all become complicated, relational, and questioning. Providing theoretically informed close-readings of breast cancer narratives, this study explores how disruption functions both personally and politically. Highlighting a number of contributors in the field of health and gender studies including Barbara Ehrenreich, Kathlyn Conway, Audre Lorde, and Teva Harrison, this work takes into account documentary film, television, and social media as popular mediums used to explore stories of disease.

While breast cancer continues to affect the lives of millions, contemporary writers and artists have responded to the ravages of the disease in creative expression. Mary K. DeShazer’s book looks specifically at breast cancer memoirs and photographic narratives, a category she refers to as mammographies, signifying both the imaging technology by which most Western women discover they have this disease and the documentary imperatives that drive their written and visual accounts of it. Mammographies argues that breast cancer narratives of the past ten years differ from their predecessors in their bold address of previously neglected topics such as the link between cancer and environmental carcinogens, the ethics and efficacy of genetic testing and prophylactic mastectomy, and the shifting politics of prosthesis and reconstruction. Mammographies is distinctive among studies of contemporary illness narratives in its exclusive focus on breast cancer, its analysis of both memoirs and photographic texts, its attention to hybrid and collaborative narratives, and its emphasis on ecological, genetic, transnational, queer, and anti-pink discourses. DeShazer’s methodology—best characterized as literary critical, feminist, and interdisciplinary—includes detailed interpretation of the narrative strategies, thematic contours, and visual imagery of a wide range of contemporary breast cancer memoirs and photographic anthologies. The author explores the ways in which the narratives constitute a distinctive testimonial and memorial tradition, a claim supported by close readings and theoretical analysis that demonstrates how these narratives question hegemonic cultural discourses, empower reader-viewers as empathic witnesses, and provide communal sites for mourning, resisting, and remembering.

This story is about Rosie, who lives in Chicago. Within three weeks she lost all of her hair and asked, "Where did it go?" Rosie loved to rock the bald, without even skipping a beat. She happily wore sunscreenƒ‚‚"ƒ‚‚€ƒ‚‚"not even a hat!ƒ‚‚"ƒ‚‚€ƒ‚‚"in the summer heat. At bedtime, Rosie would tell her own stories with a smile on her face. She'd imagine her hair going on magical adventures all over the place. From a young age, Rosie loved herself and was not phased by her look, So her mother decided to share her spirit to teach others through this book. Come on this adventure with a confident bald girl, Who tells us "Bald is beautiful!" as she smiles with a twirl. We hope this book can inspire you to love others as they are, And to love yourself every day, whether your hair is near or far.

Educational, uplifting, and thoroughly hilarious, this rollicking “bald memoir” is a one-stop guide to appreciating life as you lose your hair, and offers dating, grooming, marriage, sex, and even toupee advice for bald men and the people who claim to love them. Humorist and comedy television writer Julius Sharpe woke up on 9/11 to his own personal disaster: his hair was falling out. So You’re Going Bald is his hilarious odyssey—a tale filled with despair, horror, acceptance, and humor that everyone can relate to, whether you’re nineteen or approaching ninety—or are simply bald-curious. As Julius tells it, going bald is for-real traumatic. Losing his hair preoccupied his days and kept him up Googling every night for five straight years. He suffered in private, but now he’s making it his mission that no cue ball will live alone with the agony of hair loss ever again. Sharpe examines what it means to be hairless up top, and walks you through how to look at yourself in the mirror and not want to die. He outlines the three stages of baldness (anger, more anger, even more anger), and volunteers himself as a guinea pig, testing laser helmets, plugs, and toupees. So You’re Going Bald is one-part tough love and one-part inspiration . . . the same way that Fran Drescher’s Cancer Schmancer inspired a cure for schmancer. We all know someone who is bald, or going bald, or got their hair cut way too short. In So You’re Going Bald, Sharper provides an emotional roadmap for living life in the bald lane, giving voice to what it feels like to know that “grass doesn’t grow on a busy street.”

A renowned medical journalist reveals a new program to stop baldness and restore lost hair that includes nutritional advice, herbal and hormonal remedies, minerals and vitamins, the breakthrough Thymu-Skin, how to clean the scalp properly, and a wealth of other proven tips and techniques. Original.

This is a fascinating and instructive look at a father and daughter's relationship and the emotional strategies the family used while confronting a double mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation treatments. The story is told through edited entries from a journal maintained by the father, poetry written by the daughter, and discussions of how to manage a family while confronting the uncertainty created by breast cancer.

This popular volume on the culture of hair through human history and around the globe has been updated and revised to include even more entries and current information. How we style our hair has the ability to shape the way others perceive us. For example, in 2017, the singer Macklemore denounced his hipster undercut hairstyle, a style that is associated with Hitler Youth and alt-right men, and in 2015, actress Rose McGowan shaved her head in order to take a stance against the traditional Hollywood sex symbol stereotype. This volume examines how hair-or lack thereof-can be an important symbol of gender, class, and culture around the world and through history. Hairstyles have come to represent cultural heritage and memory, and even political leanings, social beliefs, and identity. This second edition builds upon the original volume, updating all entries that have evolved over the last decade, such as by discussing hipster culture in the entries on beards and mustaches and recent medical breakthroughs in hair loss. New entries have been added that look at specific world regions, hair coverings, political symbolism behind certain styles, and other topics.

Pam Fitros has found a life calling to educate others about Alopecia, whether through the curious looks of a child in the grocery store or on these pages. Her words are as warm as a personal letter just for you. She will love you into understanding the challenges of women with Alopecia. Pam Fitros says, "My baldness is what I have that makes me different." This isn't the only thing which sets Pam apart from others. Her tenaciously coated, loving heart spills out on these pages to inform, entertain and encourage. Boldly Bald Women will help anyone facing the challenges of Alopecia find courage to face and alleviate personal fears and find they are not alone on this journey. Carry-on Ladies... with confidence, personal fortitude, guts and persistence. As a woman of hair who complains about and uses bad hair days as an excuse... I now have a new definition of courage: "to unwrap ones head of all disguises and walk boldly into the world." Now I'm wondering, is my hair holding me back?