"F—k you, cancer": The story of a viral image

Brut America

"Sandra, it's cancer. We have to remove both breasts."  After undergoing a double mastectomy, her reaction to seeing her new body for the first time went viral. Sandra Monroy tells Brut the story behind the emotional image.

Transcript

00:00You're too young to have no breasts.

00:02You won't be able to wear a bra, you won't be able to wear a bikini,

00:05and no one will love you, right?

00:07Because you're incomplete.

00:09And if I don't do this, what happens?

00:11I mean, really, no one will love me.

00:13I mean, really, I'm going to look like an ugly doll.

00:16I don't even know what cancer is, nor what's going to happen to me.

00:20Much less what comes at the aesthetic level.

00:24I've been attending FUKAM for 12 years.

00:31The only year I didn't do the ultrasound was in 2020, when the pandemic started.

00:38And when I got there in 2021, the radiologist checked me and said,

00:43Sandy, everything is still fine on the right, but there's something on the left that I don't like.

00:48I never had a bruise, I never had red, I didn't have orange skin, I didn't have a bruise.

00:54The results arrive, and that's when the oncologist says,

00:58Sandra, it's cancer.

00:59At first, it was believed that they were only going to remove the bruise,

01:03or they were going to do both breasts, for the following reason.

01:06Being so young, you have more years of life, and therefore, you can return,

01:13or a new cancer can appear, much more aggressive, on the right breast.

01:18There, you don't think if it's a breast, you think about your life.

01:21My breasts need me, not me, my breasts.

01:24But I also found, from the term bilateral mastectomy,

01:28the fact that being flat didn't happen at all.

01:32And I found women with a new aesthetic, where for me there was absolutely nothing missing.

01:38I met Sandra because she makes super pretty, personalized monkeys.

01:43She and I clicked, and well, the results came out as we would have liked.

01:53She started doing things to say goodbye to her breasts,

01:57and that's when we agreed to take some pictures so that she would say goodbye to her breasts.

02:03What you see in the photograph are the women who have been around me all the time.

02:09My mom, Sasha, Gina.

02:12When the bets fell, the look of all of them, of Gina, Sasha, and my mom,

02:17it wasn't like, oh, poor thing, but it was a look of seeing me come out of the cocoon, right?

02:26I mean, of the metamorphosis.

02:28What that scar is leaving you, at least in my case,

02:32were two beautiful survival messages.

02:36But she never saw the photo.

02:37No, I never saw it.

02:38Until it was published.

02:39It was the first flat in Universal, and well, it has traveled the world.

02:46It is the vulnerability open to the service of all.

02:50So I think it's a debt that had to be paid by thousands of women.

02:55When you grow up, they tell you, oh, no, he doesn't have boobs, he's flat, right?

02:59Oh, he has boobs, look, he runs and they move, ha ha ha.

03:04And suddenly, when you're older, they tell you, your breasts are your currency.

03:09It's like, look, you're never going to need to pay for a drink, right?

03:11You're a woman and you have to breastfeed.

03:13And if you want to breastfeed and you can't, it's also wrong, right?

03:17If they had told me before that this was happening to me,

03:20well, I would have taught more about boobs, right?

03:22The process is not over, right?

03:24I mean, because, for example, Sandra has to continue taking a drug,

03:28which she will have to take for five years.

03:31And during that time, obviously, she has many plans, right?

03:35Like for her scars, for her body.

03:39Don't tell me, do it.

03:41Don't tell me, poor thing.

03:42What helps me is your support and your money.

03:46Because it's one of the most expensive diseases out there.

03:49We don't talk about it, we don't say it.

03:51It's a family, political, economic, environmental issue.

03:56Because in my case, the oncogenes came out negative

03:59and that meant that my cancer came from the outside.

04:04And being from the outside, then you ask yourself,

04:06am I living in a world that is making me sick?

04:09And if it's making me sick, how many more?

04:12Why is all this stored in the closet?

04:16Can't you see it's the first cause of death?

04:18I mean, can't you see that one in seven of us is going to die from this?

04:22And if we knew everything it involves,

04:24we would look at those bodies with more respect.

04:27Not just saying, you're missing this.

04:31But saying, wow, if this woman went through chemo,

04:36radiotherapy, hormonal therapy, mastectomy,

04:38or one of all of them, or all of them at the same time,

04:42I think we would value the ability to live,

04:45and not what's missing.

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