"We just want to look like each other in some way."
WHAT DOES IT MEAN, WHEN WE ARE NO LONGER ABLE TO RECOGNIZE OURSELVES?
This is a question we probably all asked ourselves to a greater or lesser extent in a figurative sense. But for many women fighting cancer, their looks are literally changed due to side effects of their treatment. Their disease becomes not only a battle for the body, but a battle to preserve a women’s appearance, and therefore a question of being able to preserve their own identity.
Look Good Feel Better is a humanitarian association whose purpose is specifically to help women undergoing cancer treatment not to lose themselves. They do this by offering free skin care and make-up courses for all women in cancer treatment.
Helle Busch Gammelgaard is the Executive Director for the association, and through her conversations with the participants, she has insights into what it means to no longer be able to recognize oneself.
Helle Busch Gammelgaard is the Executive Director for the association, and through her conversations with the participants, she has insights into what it means to no longer be able to recognize oneself.
Helle has been part of Look Good Feel Better for 11 years, and cannot imagine doing anything else. For her, it makes sense every time she sees the women leave with a slightly wider smile than when they arrived. And hopefully with a greater sense of being a human being in a community, an individual who can act for herself and, above all, a woman.
"It's not because we all have to look like superstars. We just have to feel at ease and want to be around other people.”
It is a matter of just wanting to go outside your door, and even though it may seem superficial to attribute so much importance to one's appearance, Helle learns again and again how much identity lies in just being able to look completely normal : "We just can't get around that".
The focal point in these women's lives becomes their treatment. Something that they have no control over - apart from following to the letter. Being able to actively sign up for a course – such as offered by Look Good Feel Better - and acquire tools to take care of yourself on your own gives a huge boost to their self-esteem, because you take control, emphasizes Helle. "These women are going through a super difficult time, when everything is just uphill. And now they get a day that is free, where it is not the disease that is the center of attention, but their identity is.”
"I know someone who asked for blankets to cover all the mirrors her apartment."
It is stories like these that Helle recalls when she explains how women can no longer look in the mirror. Every time they see themselves, they are reminded of their illness. They have become patients who are subjected to a life of treatment rather than a completely ordinary person: "When you meet other people, it is easy to be labeled as sick, and you may not always want to when you go down and shop”.
On the courses, 12 women meet in cozy and relaxed surroundings for 2 hours with 1 or more volunteer make-up experts, who advise on products and techniques, such as drawing eyebrows and covering the skin challenges you may have had: "You don't have to do an awful lot. It's just those little tricks that make you look a little more like everyone else."
DAY ET is proud to be able to support Look Good Feel Better with the donation of makeup bags for the courses.
