January/February 2008

Calendar Girls

The brave women of Beyond Boobs! have found an inspiring way to help fight breast cancer.

By Linda Landreth Phelps

Meet Jenn, Brenda, Elizabeth and many others—lawyer, self-employed executive, counselor, teacher and more. They’re stay-at-home moms, single women, and working wives ranging in age from 20s to 50s. Some of them have children who are still in diapers.

Arielle, the youngest among them, was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 27. Tish, the eldest, lost her breast 33 years ago, when small-breasted women had to make their own rudimentary prostheses.

All of these women share a common bond—they are featured on the pages of “A Calendar to Live By,” which highlights real women from the Hampton Roads area. They’re also all members of Beyond Boobs!, a group of dynamic young women dedicated to educating people of all ages about breast cancer, the disease that has touched them personally and changed their lives forever.

These calendar girls are visible reminders that, despite medical breakthroughs and falling mortality rates, breast cancer is still the leading cause of cancer deaths in women aged 15–54. But don’t pick up this calendar and leaf through it expecting to find doom and gloom; the women of Beyond Boobs! are all about positive energy and faith in the future. By sharing their highly personal stories with others through this calendar and their website, www.beyondboobs.org, they advocate passionately for early diagnosis for everyone.

According to the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO), the average age of breast cancer diagnosis is 62, so the typical survivor group is made up of women (and a few men as well) who are in their middle years or older. Obviously, this doesn’t offer many opportunities for younger survivors to interact with their peers. Beyond Boobs! founders recognized a need, and (thanks to a few take-charge women) a new support group was created especially for those who were diagnosed with breast cancer prior to menopause.

The name is a little startling to some, but the women chose it because it’s memorable, a little cheeky, reflects their no-nonsense attitude, and is meant to proclaim to the world that breasts are not essential to femininity.

“Our experiences have taken us beyond vanity and given us a new appreciation of life,” says Mary Beth Gibson, the 42-year-old co-founder of Beyond Boobs! “A woman’s true worth isn’t dependant on her outward appearance. I don’t have breasts, and I’ve never felt more feminine. Also, it’s a way of approaching a very heavy, serious subject with some much-needed healing humor.”

For the rest of this article, see the January issue of Hampton Roads Magazine, currently available on newsstands.