Constructing Breast Cancer in the News

Abstract

In this article, the author explores a key moment in breast cancer history—the publicity surrounding Betty Ford's radical mastectomy in 1974—and points to the ways in which the print news coverage of Ford's mastectomy offers an identity, or subject position, for breast cancer patients that is constrained by stereotypical gender roles, particularly the need for breast cancer patients to maintain their femininity. Betty Ford is articulated as an “ideal patient” within a medical success narrative that tells a story of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment in a progressive, linear fashion that minimizes the complexity of breast cancer as a disease and the questions surrounding best treatment practices. The aestheticization of breast cancer in the coverage of Betty Ford's mastectomy is one of the primary discursive building blocks of the contemporary subjectivity of the breast cancer survivor.