Author: Anna

This week I received the most delightful pair of ‘knitted knockers’ in the post. As a one-breasted woman I like to wear a prosthesis every now and then, but the silicon ones the hospital provided me with irritate my skin. It was only recently put to my attention that the charity www.knittedknockersuk.com provide bespoke soft cotton ones free of charge to women who have had mastectomies or lumpectomies,“made with love and filled with hope”.

I put in an order and within 3 weeks received these beautiful boobs, knitted specially for me by another woman. The connection between women over boobs is very powerful. These knitted specimen say so much more than pages of words could do. I’m very moved and grateful.

Like many creative processes, knitting not only requires us to learn and repeat basic skills, but also to be curious and explore variations on those `stitches’. “There are two kinds of women: those who knit and those who unravel…” (Stephanie Danler – the Paris Review Sept 8, 2015). Knitting becomes a metaphor for life itself ; We can live to connect to the other, or to unravel. Sometimes the unravelled is fixable. Sometimes not. “I knit socks because in each and every stitch, every pattern, every turn there is a lesson. Or a memory. Just like life”.(mary-mann.blogspot.com/2013/04)

And according to the Mayo Clinic, seniors who engage in knitting seem 30-50% less likely to have a ‘mild cognitive impairment’ than those who don’t.

Many lactation consultants still use knitted breasts as visual aids. In 2010 the Somerset Mothers’ Union was commissioned by the NHS to knit fake breasts to be handed to health visitors and community nurses, to help new mums learn techniques and how to cope with breast feeding complaints. The Lactation Consultants of Great Britain https://www.lcgb.org have ‘Knitted Breast The Pattern’ available on their website for downloading.

The ladies volunteering for  “Life For African Mothers” (Making Birth safer in sub-saharan Africa) make midwifery training sets which comprise not only of knitted breasts but also knitted placentas and wombs… !  Patterns anyone ? (www.lifeforafricanmothers.org)

Anna Versteeg

I grew up in Holland in the sixties without central heating, when on early winter mornings frosty lacework would grace the single glazed windows. Me and my siblings had to entertain ourselves in the downstairs living room until my mother would wake up and light the coal fire.

On one such crisp cold morning, I left the younger ones playing their games and decided to make a collage. I loved making things. Wrapped in a thick terry cloth bathrobe and armed with scissors and a large pot of glue I attacked a pile of old magazines. Before long this eight-year-old girl becamemesmerized by the bare breasts she found in one of them. I still don’t really understand why my strictly protestant parents who had zero tolerance towards sex before marriage allowed such a magazine within reach of their kids, but I cut out any breast I could find and started organizing my nippled collection into a beautiful spiral.

So engrossed in my quest, I hadn’t heard my mum coming down… A red glow took hold of my cheeks when she asked “What are YOU doing…?” I sensed a mix of curiosity and disapproval in her voice. “SILLY girl….”. While she was rakingthe ashes from the fire, I slipped behind her, scrunching up the unfinished and suddenly so highly embarrassing piece of work with my cold fingers. I stuffed the crumpled remains deep down in the small bin next to the harmonium, safely hidden under the rubbish of previous days.

I didn’t dare look my mum in the eyes at breakfast that morning and prayed she wouldn’t tell my dad. I was relieved when the clock’s big arm reached quarter past eight, time to get my coat and escape to school. On my way out it was with sadness I noticed that the accumulating heat of the coal fire was melting away the last ‘ice flowers’ on the windows.

Anna Versteeg

Unlike any other organ, the breast does most of its development well after birth, having to fully build itself from scratch during puberty. And then, if a woman is pregnant, the breast constructs and deconstructs again under the influence of pregnancy hormones, when the glands grow milk-producing structures.

Due to this sensitivity to hormonal change, breasts are an easy ‘target’ for environmental toxins and chemical compounds, which often imitate hormones such as oestrogen.

After I was diagnosed with an oestrogen receptive breast cancer and had a mastectomy, I wanted to make a positive change to my lifestyle and started looking into preventative health. I realised that a healthy diet would be a good first step. But nutritional information is a minefield of contradictions and it took me a lot of research and confidence to decide what works for me.

Reports on possible links between dairy consumption and breast cancer contradict each other, but I understood that hormones found in full milk fat could be connected with the role that oestrogen can play in the development and reoccurrence of breast cancer.

I also learnt that although milk is the ideal food for infants, as people get older many lose their ability to digest it fully and dairy can cause our bodies to become acidified.

Nobel Laureate Otto Warburg already demonstrated in the 1930s that alkalised bodies are healthy oxygenated bodies, opposed to acidic bodies, which are prone to degeneration and oxygen deprivation (which can contribute to the promotion of diseases such as cancer).

To achieve an optimal, more alkaline environment, I decided to cut out dairy and wheat and stick to a mainly plant based diet with some fish. I prefer to take my dietary fat from sources like avocados and olive oil rather than from milk.

The Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak’s approach to food is much more poetic and light hearted than mine though; With her Breast Stupa Cookery project (2005-ongoing) Sanpitak simply asks people all over the world to use the breast stupa shaped cooking moulds made in cast aluminium and glazed terracotta to produce edible creations. ‘Food becomes the medium of connection and hopefully can mend and blur all boundaries’. (see photos above)

I learnt a lot about food at the Breast Cancer Haven, which provides free complementary therapies including Nutritional Therapy for anyone affected by breast cancer and runs Healthy Fast Food Workshops. www.breastcancerhaven.org.uk

The Hello Beautiful Foundation is a UK based Cancer prevention charity which highlights the benefits of living a healthy Non-Toxic Lifestyle, an experience that starts with mindfulness and extends into nutrition and social responsibility. www.hellobeautiful.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doctor Henri de Mondeville wrote in his Cyrurgia (1306-1320) ; “Some women, unable or unwilling to resort to a surgeon, or not wanting to reveal their indecency, make in their chemises two sacks proportioned to their breasts, but shallow, and they put them on every morning, and compress them as much as they can with a suitable bandage. Others, like the women of Montpellier, compress them with tight tunics and laces…”

As the common medieval ideal of female beauty was pert, modestly sized breasts, (a slim body and a rounded belly), some women with larger breasts would bind them to reduce their size as not to be judged as ‘indecent’ as de Mondeville puts it… So already 700 years ago women felt pressurised into altering their body to conform to an idealised image.

And of course perceptions regarding the ideal female body and breast keep changing as well ;

The pert, apple shaped breast ideal of the late Medieval – Renaissance times (1300-1600 AD) changed into a more rounded and voluptuous one in Baroque times (1600-1750 AD), expressing wealth and status.

The Venus of Willendorf, a small limestone female figurine ( 25,000BC) found in 1908 in  Austria, depicts a voluptuous body with curved hips and large breasts, idealising the female figure and suggesting a strong connection to fertility.  In contrast,  but following in this Neolithic tradition, the later marble figurines from the Cyclades, Greece (3300-1100 BC) are much more elongated and angular, with small sculpted undulations for breasts.

I was intrigued when I found the above photo ; Black Rapport Day by The Neo-Naturists. This performance art group, founded in 1981, sat outside mainstream culture  and used the body as their canvas. The Neo-Naturists performances were very much body positive ; the body was celebrated instead of shaped to conform. (Studio Voltaire, London, Neo-Naturists exhibition 2016)

Anna Versteeg

Milk and lactation are incredibly ancient; the origins may stretch  back as far as 300 million years.

Scientist now know that lactation evolved from the immune system, and it’s primary function was not nutrition but protection.

The immunological benefits of breast milk were recently beautifully illustrated to me by my neighbour Dan; When in Macedonia for work, he had developed a small stye infection on top of his eyelid. Whilst discussing with a male colleague where to find appropriate medication, a female colleague overhearing the conversation noted; “don’t worry, my sister is breastfeeding”… Dan found himself blushing, imagining the sister’s bare breast, and only after further explanation understood that a squirt of breast milk was believed to have the appropriate antibacterial properties to cure his stye.

Did you know that there are 292 Human Breast Milk Banks in the world, 17 of which are in the UK and 200 in Brazil, which has been associated with a significant drop in child mortality rates.

There are also Milk Banks for research, repositories of human- or animal milk samples. One of these animal milk banks is based at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in the USA, to study the evolutionary history of different species’ milks, which can offer clues to how human milk evolved. (Catherine Zuckerman – National Geographic Jan 2019)

Photo ; Bettina Hubby – Thanks for the mammaries

Anna Versteeg

When, after 23 years together, I got married in 2017,
we asked our guests to bring 10x10cm cakes, which were assembled on tiers to make our wedding cake. My friend Nel, who had a double mastectomy herself, contributed these two ‘breasts’… humour is priceless and provides perspective …

“Being playful about important issues is hard work”

(Richard Dedomenici)