Picture this: You’re sitting in a doctor’s office, having just made one of the most difficult decisions of your life—a bilateral mastectomy. You ask to see what post-reconstruction might look like on someone like you, a Black woman. The response? Nothing. Not a single image.
This was Michelle Audoin’s reality. At 14, she’d already endured a traumatic biopsy without anesthesia, leaving her with a raised keloid scar that created shame for decades. When breast cancer came years later, while she was still nursing her second child, that teenage trauma shaped every conversation about surgery and reconstruction.
“I really wanted to see. If I am having this surgery, what is it gonna look like? How am I going to heal? Because I did not want to go through that trauma again,”
Instead of medical imagery showing her healing possibilities, she heard dismissive reassurances:
“Don’t worry, it always looks better on Black women.”
The problem wasn’t just missing photos. The medical team didn’t understand that keloid scarring—thick, raised, often painful scars common in Black patients—requires entirely different surgical considerations and healing protocols. They were making recommendations based on white women’s healing patterns for a Black woman’s body.
So Michelle did what patients do: she turned to Google. Hours of searching revealed the same pattern—endless images of white women’s reconstruction results, but nothing representing her concerns about scarring, healing, or what “success” might look like on her skin.
That Google search failure became Michelle’s calling. If the industry wouldn’t represent Black women’s experiences, she’d create that representation herself.
Two immediately actionable insights from Michelle’s journey:
Ask for evidence-based reasoning: When facing medical dismissal, Michelle’s lightning-round advice was perfect: “Where’s the science behind that? Where’s the research that justifies your standpoint?” Don’t accept “don’t worry” as medical guidance.
Know your healing pattern: If you’re prone to keloid scarring, this must be central to every surgical conversation. It’s not vanity—it’s medical necessity that affects healing, pain levels, and long-term outcomes.
Michelle’s story reveals something crucial about cancer care: representation isn’t just about feeling seen (though that matters enormously). It’s about getting appropriate medical care based on how your body actually heals, not how doctors assume it will.
Eight years into living with metastatic breast cancer, having navigated multiple surgeries and treatment lines, Michelle has created Uncovered with Rethink Breast Cancer. Uncovered is a project that showcases the reconstruction results of black and brown women and tells their complete stories.
The day she first photographed herself for the project was the first time she’d looked at her whole body since reconstruction.
“It wasn’t until the photographer turned the camera around after the first few photos that I actually saw myself as beautiful and whole for the first time.”
Watch or listen to the episode to learn how to change healthcare’s approach to representation? How to advocate for appropriate care? Why clinical trials could save Black women’s lives if we change the narrative around participation?