Australian nurse Beth Whaanga has many scars on her body as a result of having a melanoma lumpectomy, she is also missing the lymph node on the underside of her left arm.
When she was told she is a carrier of the BRCA2 gene, a gene that puts women at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer, she underwent double mastectomy and a total hysterectomy.
She wanted to share this story with the world as her body now tells a story like no other, yet after she posted the pictures on Facebook she lost 103 friends.
Photographed by close friend Nadia Mascot, Beth posed for a number of nude pictures as she confidently put her scars and stretch marks on display.
In a post, she wrote: “to find others who are willing to participate in our project so that we might show others that cancer affects everyone.”
The project is called Under the Red Dress and aims to remind people that everyone isn’t as strong as they make themselves out to be.
“Under the Red Dress is a project which attempts to tell those silent stories that people are not only wanting to tell,” Mascot wrote, “but that people want to hear. Everybody likes to be reminded that the person next door is only human as they are."
Thankfully, thousands of positive remarks and comments weighed out all the negative feedback from these images.
