Open Column for Volunteers: A few odd thoughts on breast cancer prophylactics

A few odd thoughts on breast cancer prophylactics

Published 23.10.2025 | Open Column for Volunteers

Someone close to me, an older relative, got breast cancer – stage 4, which means it’s spread in her body and there’s no use to have an operation. She is getting treatment; we are talking as best we can from different countries, with ever more communication channels blocked – everyone involved is doing all they can. Her cancer could have been spotted in the early stages, if only she went for screenings when invited and wasn’t in denial about the whole thing for a long time before the issue became pressing and unavoidable. Then the treatment would likely have been different, and her chances for a longer-term survival significantly higher.

Impacted by all that, I went to the first seminar on breast cancer prophylactics I could find, which was conveniently happening at Naistenkartano this past August. There I was, then, listening to how in Finland only about 82% of women invited to mammogram screenings show up for the check up, an even smaller share of them being foreigners. It has been researched and proven time and time again that early detection of cancer is a key to significantly higher survival rates, so why on earth not go? I must admit that I can think of a few reasons.

First, cancer itself is such a taboo topic. It’s only ever talked about in media as something one can “beat”, or then in terms of palliative care and losing loved ones to it – like an “on/off” switch, one either survives it or not. No wonder that in anything that has to do with cancer someone might start feeling fatalistic: if it happens then that’s the end, so why not just enjoy your time while you can, not thinking about all this? Which is in some ways even true, but only partly.

The lecture was all about how there’s truly not much we can impact when it comes to cancer: there are regular healthy lifestyle guidelines, like the Ministry of Health’s food pyramid – and that’s about the best we’ve got. There’s neither a group of food products to exclude from or add to our ration, nor any specific exercise that could guarantee no one ever getting sick. The only thing we can reliably do for ourselves in this respect – the lecturer could not emphasise it more – is to really get to know our own bodies.

In this case, it’s our breasts: they naturally come in so many different shapes and forms that only we can know what is normal for ours. When checking for symptoms, we are to be looking for anything unexpected, with no clear cause, sometimes rapid changes. For example, a rash could be caused by an allergy, but if there’s no allergens around and it doesn’t go away in a reasonable time – that’s a cause to go to a doctor and have it checked. To spot if anything has changed, we must know how it was to begin with. As a body awareness guide and, well, a woman, I know that’s often not an easy task for so many of us.

There is an exercise in my therapeutic program: to look at oneself in a mirror, taking in all the features of one’s own appearance as neutrally as possible, like something that just exists, a phenomenon of the world. Group participants told me that it was maybe the hardest task in the whole program! And I do understand why: as women, we are conditioned to look at our own reflections critically, in search of bits to fix, hide, or be ashamed of. Subconsciously striving for unachievable perfection of professional models’ images after digital retouching, or, in a more modern version, created by AI from scratch. We are told that our bodies are tools, imperfect vessels to be improved, reshaped, brought to a desired form. Never has anyone I know been taught to be open and curious about how our bodies really are – likely due to centuries of religious puritanism, curiosity about one’s own body is still often seen as kind of obscene.

Case in point: all the fuss about mothers breastfeeding in public places, or Instagram’s “war on nipple”. Just recently I went to a live model drawing session and had a great time there. Yet, as soon as I considered posting my drawings, someone told that my account would be blocked. I had to recheck the community guidelines – they said that it’s ok now to post breasts if it’s art. Still, I soon remembered that an artist and an activist from my country of origin had been put through endless circles of hell for far less: namely, her very schematic drawings explaining accessibly that female bodies come in many different shapes and forms. She was on trial for years and had to flee the country without her name ever being fully cleared.

Absurd as the whole thing was, it’s proof that pictures of women’s bodies (made by women, no less!) can be interpreted as obscene and even criminal, if someone with power decided to do so. On top of that, as a teacher at the beginning of a semester, although I only ever teach adults, I started wondering whether it’d be appropriate if my students ran into my drawings by chance. Self-censorship is a thing, so after just two days of having my pictures posted I removed them from my public artist account. Here are my drawings – would you have posted and kept them online if you were me?

To sum up: to keep ourselves healthy as long as possible, we must get to know our own bodies. To take proper care of them, we have to learn to listen to their signals and act to fulfil their needs. We ought to learn to spot changes, but that’s not easy to achieve, if we’re not culturally allowed to have a proper look at ourselves in a mirror, through our own eyes, without shame or judgement. Not seeing our bodies as flawed and lacking objects of someone else’s potential interest, as we have been trained by centuries of male gaze-centred art, cinema, literature – and now all sorts of visual media.

Instead, tuning in, learning to really see and hear, to care and love, and remember that this body is our only form of being alive and present in this world. It sees for us, hears, smells, tastes, feels – and it is glorious!

With that in mind, I wish us all courage to have a proper look at how we really are right now and take good care of ourselves, now and in the future.

Author: Sofia Pieti, our volunteer, a teacher, a body awareness therapeutic group facilitator and an artist, at the moment writing her first book.

You can find out more about her upcoming book in a series of live fairy-tale readings “Healing tales for grown up girls (and boys): Exploring folktales’ therapeutic potential”, starting on 11.12.25.