Miss America contestant to undergo double mastectomy
The 24-year-old Miss DC plans to undergo a double mastectomy after she struts in a bikini and flaunts her roller skating talent. She is removing her breasts as a preventative measure to reduce her chances of developing the disease that killed her mother, grandmother, and great aunt.
“My mom would have given up every part of her body to be here for me, to watch me in the pageant,” she said between rehearsals and preliminary competitions at Planet Hollywood on the Las Vegas Strip. “If there’s something that I can do to be proactive, it might hurt my body, it might hurt my physical beauty, but I’m going to be alive.”
Ms Rose said it was her father who first broached the subject, during her first year of college, two years after the death of her mother.
“I said, ‘Dad I’m not going to do that. I like the body I have.’ He got serious and said, ‘Well then you’re going to end up dead like your mom.’”
She has pondered that conversation for the past three years, during which she has worked as a model and won several pageants, including Miss Maryland USA and the Miss District of Columbia competition.
She measures her age by the time of her mother, Judy Rose’s, first diagnosis, at age 27. “Right now, I’m three years away,” she said.
Judy had one breast removed in her 20s, but waited until she was 47 to remove the other one, which Ms Rose’s father had called a ticking time bomb.
“That’s when they found she had a stage three tumour in her breast,” Ms Rose said. “And that’s why for me, I’m not going to wait.”
She plans to have reconstructive surgery, but said the procedure has complications and there is no guarantee she will regain her pageant-approved bust.
Preventive surgery is a “very reasonable” choice for someone with Ms Rose’s family history and a genetic predisposition, said Patricia Greenberg, director of cancer prevention at Los Angeles’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Centre.
“I’ve seen young women have it done, and they have great peace of mind,” she said, adding the alternative is repeated mammograms and physical exams, which detect but do not prevent cancer from developing.
Art McMaster, the CEO of the Miss America Organisation, called Ms Rose an “incredible example” of strength and courage.
The Newburg, Maryland native said she has received letters from supporters all over the country, including from fellow “previvors” who say they have been inspired to undergo their own preventive surgeries.
The Wynn sports book gives her 25-to-1 odds of winning the Miss America crown, making Ms Rose a moderate favourite.
But her decision is drawing criticism as well as praise in the staged-managed world of pageants, where contestants regularly go under the knife for a very different reason.
She also receives hate mail from beauty circuit die- hards who write to insist that she continue filling out her bikini.
“You have people who say, ‘Don’t have the surgery. This is mutilating your body. You don’t have cancer.’
“They want to pick apart every little thing,” she said. Some have even accused her of faking it to make herself a more media- friendly candidate.
This kind of pre-emptive surgery has divided the medical community as well. For someone in her early 20s to have the procedure is “very unusual,” said Todd Tuttle, chief of surgical oncology at the University of Minnesota.
Her brother, who works for an oncology association, said he sees the irony in a beauty queen choosing to give up her breasts but supports his sister’s choice.
“For me what trumps everything is her living, hopefully to a ripe old age, as opposed to any ancillary things that she might lose from potentially winning Miss America,” said Dane Rose, 31.
