With the focus on women’s health, panelists of the Body Image Conference showed that the human body can change in many ways throughout life, both good and bad. One speaker, a cancer survivor, discussed the changes cancer causes in the body.
“My body is a country and it has been invaded,” Jessica Mangir, Cabrini alumna, opened.
In Sickness and In Health: Beauty and the Body was the seventh panel during the Body Image Conference that took place on Cabrini’s campus from Wednesday, Oct. 22 through Thursdau, Oct. 23.
Panel seven featured three presenters that expressed their research through different mediums.
Mangir started the panel with an experiential piece centered around living life with cancer. Diagnosed with stage three colon cancer when she was 25 years old, Mangir just recently finished her chemotherapy treatments before presenting at the conference. Using speech as her medium, she presented an older English piece on breast cancer and reflections of her own battle as well as her mother’s multiple battles.
Meagan May continued the series using art as her medium. An art history major from Texas A&M University, May shared her knowledge alongside the artwork of Hannah Wilke and Jo Spence. Wilke and Spence are both well-known photographers, known for their work of documenting the effects of cancer on the human body.
Maria Monastra, senior English major, closed the panel with a speech focused on women with post-partum bodies and pop culture’s influence on their self-image.
“Pregnancy isn’t disempowering,” Monastra said.
Regardless of what may happen to your body during life, Mangir summed up the panel in four words: “You just keep going.”
