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Layout Provided By FreeCodeSource.com - Myspace Layouts----------------------------------------------------The Real Mud Flap Girl Unveiled In A Fight Against Breast CancerThe sexy silhouette of the mud flap girl has recently moved from the back of semi-trucks to pop culture as the new street chic. Celebrities such as Kate Hudson, Pink, Kim Catrell, (Sex And The City), Posh (Spice Girls) and Britney Spears wear it as jewelry. Honda made a Super Bowl commercial using it. It adorns soaps, flags, tee shirts and hundreds of other products. I would have never guessed that one impulsive experience in my early twenties would end up with the stylized image of my body plastered on semi-trucks for the next 30 years. If you gave any thought to who that girl was, you might assume she was either an exotic dancer, a lingerie model, or the imaginary wish of a creative artist. I doubt you’d guess a tall, young, conservative nurse would be the real mud flap girl.I never planned to go public with the fact that I was the inspiration and the model for the original mud flap girl image. It was always that playful little secret I only told my closest friends and none of my family. All that changed on a fateful day 30 years later when a routine mammogram found an extremely suspicious lump in my left breast.It would be hard to find a single adult whose life has not been touched by cancer. We all have had friends and family members who have faced this illness. After being diagnosed I felt I was no longer in control of my life, how could something so small threaten my existence. I realized that to get through this experience with the right attitude I had to turn this into a positive.An old friend, Mike Bilodeaux, who knew me during the mudflap experience, suggested that I come out from behind the veil and share my mudflap girl story as a way to encourage others to donate to cancer research and remind women that routine mammograms can save their lives. I am now in the process of writing a book on breast cancer from the perspective of the real mud flap girl.At the time the original image was designed, I was 5’11†tall and about a size 6. I have very long legs and was naturally well endowed with shoulder length brown hair. The artist added even more to my bustline, made my waist thinner and my hair longer. The final image was a similar but enhanced resemblance of my figure. I worked as the nursing director of a Hospice program in Southern California. I had no idea in those days that I would eventually have to fight the cancer battle, as my patients had.I was an ordinary girl, not obsessed with my appearance but confident that I was an attractive woman. I was single, dedicated, a hard working nurse, from a conservative family. I had no idea that this wacky idea would soon become a national image and show up on the mud flaps of trucks all over the country. It was a crazy, fun and out of character experience for me. I was often described as a classy and sophisticated woman, how on earth could I disclose that I was the girl behind one the most famous female images, the sexy, suggestive, and somewhat campy mudflap girl.Yet for me that image represented a woman with a little attitude; a free spirited, sassy, in charge woman who could have fun with her femininity.The beauty and allure of a woman’s body is what has made this image an icon that has survived for 30 years. Every woman has little of the mud flap girl in her. We all want to feel appealing and desired by the men we love. It’s the men who recognize the mud flap girl in each of us no matter what our various sizes and shapes are, that see our real beauty from the inside out. Those men who see with their eyes the physical and feel with their hearts the more illusive core of the women they cherish. The mud flap girl image is a perception, part reality, part illusion. A perfection many of us strive for yet few of us can fully achieve.Sitting in a doctor’s office listening to a description of mastectomy surgery and survival percentages was not a position I ever thought I would be in. I am hopefully one of the lucky ones. I discovered my bout with cancer by doing an annual routine mammogram. My cancer was ultimately classified as a Level 1, the lowest level and I had no lymph involvement. I had caught it at an early stage. I chose to have a lumpectomy rather than a mastectomy and radiation not chemotherapy. I also chose to use complementary treatment with very specific supplements. These supplements were prescribed by Dr. Ron Peters MD, a Scottsdale physician who specializes in Integrated Medicine.If my pathology results had been different I probably would have made much different choices. Each woman with this illness will have a set of treatment and diagnostic choices to make. There is no single approach to cancer treatment. There are many options that are presented based on your biopsy results and your body’s unique health status.I opted to have a new gene study called Onco DX done on the tumor cells. This test of 21 genes found in the tumor cells, predicted that my chance for reoccurrence was only 12%, so in my case chemotherapy only improved my chance for survival by 1-2%. This was an expensive test but it helped me make the decision with my oncologist Dr. Calvacant to not have chemotherapy.A shocking number of women are being diagnosed with breast cancer each year. There are ways you can help to stop this terrible disease and help save the mud flap girls in your life. Join me and donate to the Susan G. Koman Breast Cancer Foundation at www.komen.org, or the American Cancer Society at www.cancer.org . Thirty years ago my stylized image became the iconoclastic image of feminine curves and today once again I have become the poster girl for Routine Mammograms.
