It’s giving classic Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress! It’s giving Greek muse in Hercules! It’s giving bridesmaids toasting with champagne in matching Etsy robes! It’s Mindy Kaling’s exam gown at a mammogram appointment, and it is serving. 

If you’ve never sat alone in a doctor’s office styling your exam robe, taking a furtive selfie, and praying the door doesn’t swing open, well, you should try it. Never have I ever taken a selfie at a gynecologist appointment that was unflattering. On Thursday, October 21, Kaling posted an iconic example of this extremely specific genre of self-portraiture. She captioned the pic: “Feeling cute in my annual mammogram robe! Last year a lot of women missed their yearly mammogram, hopefully you can make an appointment to get checked. It’s so important. Tag me in your mammogram pic and you KNOW I’m gonna comment.” 

Kaling has millions of followers on social media, so it’s a big deal for her to promote mammograms—x-rays that can catch breast cancer early—and offer an incentive to fans to get them. In a study of over 1,300 people published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 41% said they skipped out on medical care during the first months of the pandemic. Now more than ever, it’s important to listen to healthcare professionals. When the medical assistant says, “Please put on your gown, the doctor will be in to see you soon,” you should treat the word “gown” literally. And as Kaling shows, the very best selfies are taken in gynecology offices and breast cancer screening rooms. Pink flatters all. This is a versatile look that you can wear to a picnic, the office, brunch with friends, a date-night…the list goes on. 

You should get a breast exam every 1-3 years between the ages of 25 and 39, and a mammogram every year or two after you turn 40, according to Planned Parenthood. Other great opportunities for a gown photo opp: an STI check! A mole screening! An annual physical! Plenty of people skipped doctors appointments during the height of the pandemic out of safety concerns, but the JAMA study showed that significant numbers skipped their appointments for financial reasons. If you have health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, mammograms are covered every two years for women after the age of 50. And Planned Parenthood and other women’s health clinics offer reduced rates as needed, including for people who do not have health insurance. (This is one of the many, many ways Planned Parenthood saves lives.) 

Scroll down the responses to Mindy Kaling’s tweet, and you will be treated to a parade of looks—women in hot pinks and Pepto Bismols, semi-sheer fabrics, deep-Vs, and high slits. There are stories from cancer survivors and mammogram newbies, gratitude and grief and cheerful grumbling. There is language for breasts that runs from “tatas” to “boobs” to “sloppy bags.”  

All of it is perfect. Let this be a new trend—our Instagram explore pages should just be women taking selfies as they wait for their doctor to come back in. With this, I begin to pull together my makeup look my upcoming yearly wellness exam. 

There really is only one question left: Could you use a speculum as a claw clip? 

Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter. 

“Is that one of the matte colors?” A woman, choosing a polish from the wall of nail lacquers behind her, squinted at my nails as she approached me on a late July afternoon this past summer. I was sitting at a manicure station at a salon near my apartment, waiting for the nail technician to finish with another client. I’d barely opened my mouth before she came closer and suddenly stopped in her tracks. A quizzical, slightly disgusted look crept over her face. 

I knew this look well: a split-second switch from curious to confused, usually accompanied by some involuntary sound before the person sputters out, “Oh. Sorry. I just…never mind.” The interaction immediately brought me back to a similar moment months earlier, when I first picked up my mani-pedi habit again and a nail technician asked why my nails looked “like that.” You see, that matte black was au naturel. As the woman scuttled away, I joked to myself, “Maybe she’s born with it, or maybe it’s cancer.”

This October marks my first cancerversary. It’s been exactly one year since I was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer right before my 32nd birthday. I felt a quickly growing lump in my breast during the summer of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, when doctor appointments were hard to come by. It took months before my official diagnosis, though it was clear my medical team already knew what it was. 

You quickly become an expert in doctorspeak when you’re waiting in cancer limbo. “It looks concerning” translates to “You’re fucked.” By the time of my diagnosis, the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes. My treatment plan included two surgeries, two intensive rounds of chemo, monthly injections to alternating butt cheeks, and radiation. Each step offered its own unique strain of misery.

Chemotherapy brought on myriad side effects, including splotchy and scaly skin, hot flashes, and drastic weight fluctuations. It also discolored my tongue and my fingernails, which turned shades of inky black and purple before peeling away from the nail bed and cracking or breaking off. This side effect is called nail lifting, and it’s as chic as it sounds. I got vaccinated in March, which coincided with my first round of chemo. I decided this was cause for celebration and immediately booked my first mani-pedi of the pandemic with all the extras: hot stones, a massage, keratin gloves. When the nail tech finished and asked if I liked how the color turned out, I inspected my nails—beautifully painted in a warm brown hue from Essie called Playing Koi—and burst into tears.

For NYC transplants, one of the proof points for becoming a real New Yorker is having a public breakdown. This wasn’t my first rodeo. In my 14 years here, a couple of shameless and uncontrollable crying fits come to mind. I laid any remaining doubt to rest that day. “Don’t worry! I’m fine, I’m fine! They look sooo nice!” I said, while sucking in air between sobs, creating a special brand of awkward for everyone in my vicinity.

Up until that moment, catching a glimpse of my nails—opening a door, sending a text message, washing my hands—was a constant reminder of my cancer. Seeing them painted and exceedingly normal overwhelmed me. Most importantly, it sparked a ritual. I committed to treating myself to manicures every few weeks, embracing it as a creative outlet and trying out trends like inverse French tips, abstract designs, and mix-and-match colors. Anything to take my mind off my reality. My nails were too brittle to handle acrylics or even UV gel lights, but getting them done became a simple act of self-care that lifted my spirits and let me feel the tiniest bit like myself.

The following February, Newton-John said she was “feeling great” ahead of her daughter’s wedding. “I’m so lucky to still be doing all these things. I don’t think I imagined living this long! I feel very blessed.”

Shannen Doherty

The 90210 actor announced in February of 2015 that she was undergoing treatment after a breast cancer diagnosis. In July of 2016, following a second round of chemotherapy, she documented the process of chopping off her hair—which lead to shaving her head entirely—on Instagram.

“After my second treatment, my hair was really matted, like in dreadlocks. And I went to try and brush it out, and it just fell out,” Doherty told ET. “We did stages. We did a pixie. And then we did a mohawk, which was my favorite look. And then, finally, we had to get the shaver thing and just buzz it off.”

Though her cancer went into remission in 2017, she would share in February of 2020 that it had returned as stage IV. In spite of her diagnosis, she joined the Beverly Hills, 90210, reboot, which aired in 2019, viewing it as an opportunity to prove that she could continue to work despite her health struggles. “One of the reasons, along with Luke, that I did 90210 and didn’t really tell anybody [was] because I thought, People can look at that [as] people with stage IV can work too,” she said.

“I’m not signing off,” she told Elle in 2020. “I feel like I’m a very, very healthy human being. It’s hard to wrap up your affairs when you feel like you’re going to live another 10 or 15 years.”

She’s continued to share “truthful” photos of her cancer journey with her Instagram followers, speaking to both her mental and physical health, and—most recently—her decision to shave her head in the face of post-chemotherapy hair loss. 

Bershan Shaw

The Buckle Up With Bershan podcast host and motivational speaker went through radiation after first being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, at age 33. Two years later, though (just weeks before her wedding), she’d learn the cancer had returned as stage IV. At the time she was given just three months to live, but—as she shared on Instagram this month—“I’m here 12 years later thriving.”

Fans of the short-lived OWN reality series Love in the City may recognize Shaw from the 2014 show. Fans of The Real Housewives of New York can keep an eye out for her there next season: People reported in September of 2020 that she’d been seen filming with the cast.

Since her diagnosis, Shaw’s used her platforms (her Urawarrior app is slated to come out soon) to build women up—and promote breast cancer awareness. “The biggest thing today is to check your boobies,” she wrote recently. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared and don’t skip your appointment. Ladies, get yourself checked out. You can and will come out on the other side of it.”

“I also have a dragon that curves around my right hip, down to my knee, where I had rods surgically inserted into my femur to support my bones, where the cancer had spread; this hides the scars. To me, dragons symbolize spring, generosity, independence, free-mindedness, and creativity. I’m also right-handed, so having the dragon on my dominant side is also significant.” —A.J.

“Butterflies represent transformation, bursting forth from the darkness and isolation of the chrysalis, which is not unlike what has happened to me as a result of my MBC diagnosis. This tattoo represents how I’ve burst out of my shell. I have my kiddos’ names in the wings, because they give me wings, and my husband’s name in the body of the butterfly, since he is my rock, centering and grounding me. Wearing art on my body allows me to redefine the scars and effects of MBC treatment.” —A.J.

“My tattoos are part of who I am as a woman, kind of like my scars have become. As an artist and as a woman living with metastatic breast cancer, I have a story to tell, and I just happen to wear my story on my skin. I’ve spent my 21-year career in the field of tattooing, so not every tattoo has an intention behind it. They do, however, all speak to me. They serve as reminders of where I was at any given moment, physically or mentally, over the last 20 years, as well as how far I’ve come in life. Some of my favorites are my children’s names, my grandparents’ portraits, and the Hindu god Ganesha—the remover of obstacles—on my throat, which I got just after my terminal breast cancer diagnosis. —Beth Fairchild 

(Editor’s note: Read more of Beth’s story—and see more of her tattoos—here.)

Getting any breast cancer diagnosis can feel impossible to navigate. And a stage IV breast cancer diagnosis can feel infinitely more overwhelming. (Stage IV breast cancer—also known as metastatic breast cancer (MBC)—is a cancer that originated in the breast but has spread elsewhere in the body. It’s considered a terminal diagnosis.)

“I think the most important first step is to take a deep breath and remember that although metastatic breast cancer is not curable, it is treatable,” says Julie Fasano, M.D., a medical breast oncologist at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. “Women can do so well for such a long time without experiencing significant side effects related to their underlying cancer and from the treatment itself.”

But how do you get from “diagnosis” to “doing well”? Step one: “Come to your medical oncology consultation with a loved one,” Fasano says. “Having another person present to act a second set of ears is so important.”

In addition to a loved one, Fasano shares seven questions you should bring with you, as well.

What does my imaging show?

It’s important to understand what’s visible in your initial CAT or PET scans. From there, oncologists typically order new scans every two to four months to monitor the effectiveness of your treatment. “If therapy is keeping the cancer stable, then we continue treatment,” Fasano says. “If the therapy is no longer working, then we try a different treatment.”

What are my tumor markers?

Breast cancers express certain proteins (called tumor markers or biomarkers) that can be checked with blood tests. Your doctor can explain the results of your initial blood work—and how she’ll be monitoring your tumor markers to assess whether you’re responding to treatment.

Should I undergo genetic testing?

Only about 5% to 10% of patients have a genetic mutation (BRCA1 or BRCA2) that predisposes them to develop breast cancer. But if you’re in that minority, you might be a candidate for treatment with a type of medication called a PARP inhibitor.

What can you tell me about my tumor?

In short, your doctor will be able to tell you what causes your specific type of cancer to grow, stabilize, or shrink. The majority of breast cancers are hormone-receptor positive, meaning estrogen and progesterone “feed” the cancer. These types of breast cancer are most often treated with a combination of antiestrogen therapy and a newer class of targeted therapies called CDK 4/6 inhibitors, which, Fasano says, have revolutionized advanced breast cancer treatments. Your tumor may be HER2-positive or triple-negative. In all cases, these distinctions help dictate your treatment: If it’s triple-negative and expresses the PDL1 protein, you may be a candidate for immunotherapy. If it’s is HER2-positive, you’ll likely be a candidate for multiple HER2-targeted therapies. 

Has my tumor been sent for testing?

“We often send the tumor for a genomic profile analysis,” Fasano says. “This analysis tells us if there are any mutations in the tumor, which could help us decide what future therapies we can use to treat the cancer. Also, if a tumor has a particular mutation, it may make someone eligible for a clinical trial.”

Am I eligible for any clinical trials?

Oncologists are always on the lookout for treatments that will increase the life expectancy of breast cancer patients. (You can learn more about clinical trials here.) “We’ve made so many strides in treating metastatic breast cancer because of clinical trials,” Fasano says, “which is why I am so hopeful for all of my patients.”

What side effects can I expect?

As you’re considering potential courses of treatment, you should understand the possible side effects of each. “There is so much that the doctors and nurses can do to mitigate the side effects of any treatments,” Fasano says. “We want to do everything we can to help patients maintain a good quality of life while undergoing cancer treatment.”

Once you’re diagnosed, you get a PET scan to determine if the cancer has spread. Before I got mine, I thought I’d get chemotherapy and a mastectomy, and then my life would go back to normal. But my PET scan revealed that the cancer had already spread—it was metastatic. It wasn’t until I Googled it that weekend that I realized that metastatic breast cancer is stage IV breast cancer, which has a life expectancy of two to three years. That was the moment I realized I had a terminal illness.

My doctors suggested that I go on hormone therapy and “enjoy the time that I had left.” My husband and I couldn’t believe they could say that. I got second and third opinions, and they were all different. I eventually landed on an aggressive treatment course that included chemotherapy to shrink my large tumor; then we would decide if I should have the mastectomy. I was in bed for three months. I lost all of my hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes. I was hospitalized a few times during chemo because I had a fever and so I was put into isolation and had to stop treatment. My daughter was so attached to me at that time and there were some days where she would just come and sit next to me in bed and it broke my heart because I was so afraid of her sitting next to me; I didn’t want her to be around that toxicity that was probably coming out of my body.

Luckily, my tumor did shrink significantly after chemo. I opted to have the surgery, followed by radiation. It burnt my skin so badly that I could barely even put on clothes. But I got through it. I took one day at a time.

It’s a sad fact that today, nearly everyone knows someone who’s had breast cancer. Yet there’s one fact not everyone knows: 30% of people with early-stage breast cancer who’ve “beat” the disease will eventually see it return as stage IV, also known as advanced or metastatic breast cancer. That means the disease has spread to other parts of the body, a diagnosis that carries an average life expectancy of just 24 to 36 months. MBC is the only form of breast cancer that kills. Yet while MBC claims the lives of 115 people daily (“like an airplane falling from the sky every single day”), less than 5% of U.S. breast cancer funds raised go toward researching new treatments for it.

Those shocking statistics explain why more and more people are embracing a reimagined breast-cancer-awareness ribbon that goes beyond pink. Created by Self in 1992, the instantly recognizable pink ribbon is closely associated with early detection and celebrating survivors—but there’s no surviving or “beating” MBC, just buying time via treatment. Thus a tricolor metastatic breast cancer ribbon aims to raise awareness for the need to direct funding toward the development of life-extending treatments. In it, green represents the triumph of spring over winter, life over death; teal symbolizes healing and spirituality; and a thin pink-ribbon overlay signifies metastatic cancer that originated in the breast.

One inspiring initiative that’s helped the metastatic breast cancer ribbon go mainstream is an annual event that shines light on its colors and its cause—quite literally and beautifully. During #LightUpMBC, hundreds of iconic landmarks around the world are illuminated in green, pink, and teal. More than 225 sites range from soaring skyscrapers like One World Trade Center to natural wonders like Niagara Falls, spanning all 50 states and beyond. On October 13 (National Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day), viewers can find a local landmark to visit in person or take it all in from the comfort of home by tuning in to #LightUpMBC Live, a virtual benefit kicking off at 8:30 p.m. ET. Airing on LiveXLive, Facebook Live, YouTube, and METAvivor.org/lightupmbc, the show will feature inspiring MBC stories told from the illuminated landmarks around the globe as well as live musical performances by Kristin Chenoweth, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty. Another highlight this year: Drone Racing League pilot Phluxy, whose aunt is a breast cancer survivor, will fly over the I-35W bridge and Capella Tower in Minneapolis to capture a spectacular aerial view of its glowing MBC-awareness colors. Co-hosting the show are TV personality Katie McGee and motivational speaker Tami Eagle, who’s living with MBC and created The Eagle Method during the pandemic as a way to help others cope with uncertainty, build resilience and make each day meaningful.

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#LightUpMBC

Some of the landmarks that were lighted up in green, pink, and teal for previous years’ #LightUpMBC events. Click here for a full list of the landmarks that are participating in 2021.

The benefit—which raised more than $100,000—featured inspiring stories from patient ambassadors like Chawnte Randall, who’s raising awareness of the fact that the mortality rate of MBC is 40% higher for Black women; Adiba Barney, author of the upcoming book When Life Hands You Cactuses, Make Margaritas; and Dee Lakhani Shravah, who found a lump during a self-exam and was diagnosed with MBC just before her 40th birthday. Veteran Kirby Lewis discussed his mastectomy (because yes, men get breast cancer too), and Eva Crawford, a mother of three, spoke to why pink is not enough. The event also included musical performances by John Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls and David Bryan of Bon Jovi.

The original spark for #LightUpMBC came from Laura Inahara, a New Hampshire woman who lost her best friend, Jessica Moore, to metastatic breast cancer. A varsity girls’ basketball coach, Moore had gotten elbowed in the breast while playing the game one day, and the resulting pain kept lingering. As a nurse, she knew her injury should be healing more quickly. After she visited doctors to get checked out, she found out she had metastatic breast cancer—meaning the disease had already progressed and spread to her bones, despite her having no other symptoms. She was only 32. She fought the disease for four years, passing away at age 36. “Prior to Jessica’s passing, she said she thought it would be amazing to light a landmark for MBC as a way to raise awareness,” says Inahara, who founded a group called Moore Fight Moore Strong in her friend’s honor. In October 2017, five months after Moore died, the group lit their first landmark—the Memorial Bridge in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, near Jessica’s hometown.

A working mom by day, Inahara began sitting down each night to work on expanding #LightUpMBC. Now, the annual event is a major source of donations, via Metavivor, toward researching treatments that could turn stage IV breast cancer into a chronic disease instead of a deadly one. “[Metavivor remains] the only U.S. organization dedicated to awarding annual grants for peer-reviewed stage IV breast cancer research,” Inahara explains. “That is what it will take to find a cure and stop losing more than 43,000 lives to breast cancer each year. We feel certain that we can get more research funding so no more of our friends have to die from this disease. There is often a misconception there is a cure for breast cancer. We want to share with anyone who will listen that there is not.”

If anyone knows grit, it’s Chaunte Lowe. The 37-year-old high jumper has competed in four Olympics through three pregnancies. She brought home a bronze medal in 2008 and still holds the American record for the women’s high jump (both indoor and outdoor). And now she’s training for a mind-boggling fifth Olympic appearance—while facing a breast cancer diagnosis, chemotherapy, and a mastectomy. So yeah, she’s no quitter.

Lowe found a “rice-size” lump in her breast in 2018, but a doctor initially wrote it off. Lowe was exceptionally healthy and young—not the typical profile of a breast cancer patient. But as an Olympic athlete, she was also exceptionally in tune with her body. “There was something internally tugging at me, telling me, ‘No. Pay attention to me,’” she says. Eleven months later, she went back for another scan—the lump had tripled in size.

In 2019, Lowe was diagnosed with triple-negative invasive ductal carcinoma, an aggressive form of breast cancer that disproportionately affects Black women. “I felt like I needed to say goodbye to my kids. Everything that I hadn’t done with them as a mom, everything I hadn’t done with my husband as a wife, flashed before my eyes so quickly, and I just instantly felt a ton of regret,” Lowe says. “That’s the thing that caused me to say, ‘No. Uhuh. We have to fight.’”

She made plans for a mastectomy and several months of chemotherapy. And then a comeback. By the time she finished chemo, she’d have about six months to get healthy and in Olympic shape for the trials ahead of the originally planned Tokyo 2020 Games. It was a gargantuan thing to ask of her mind and her body, but she’d had plenty of practice with that. “The biggest obstacle that I’ve ever faced, which helped prepare me for that, was being a year out from the Olympics—not one, not two, but three times—and finding out that I was expecting a child. The timing could not have been more imperfect,” Lowe says. Each time she had a choice: “Lay on the ground and cry about it, or come up with a plan to figure out how we can get this done,” she says. “And figure out what I needed to do to not only become a mother that’s going to grow a human, but to also become an elite athlete that’s going to be prepared to compete at the Olympic stage.”

Each time her process was the same: Write a vision. Make a plan. Sacrifice for the plan. Execute the plan. Cancer treatment was no different. “I knew that this process worked—it worked to make four Olympic teams, it worked to break the American record, it worked to win a world championship, it worked to win an Olympic medal,” says Lowe, who is now a partner of the American Cancer Society and Stand Up to Cancer.

Her vision, once the reality of the diagnosis had set it, was immediately clear: Survive—and then make it to Tokyo, as much for the chance to compete again as for the platform to talk about the importance of early detection. “If I could at least raise the question, ‘Should I be talking to my doctor about this to get screened?’ then maybe I could help save lives,” she says.

So she trained through chemo and then through the uncertainty of the pandemic, her chemotherapy-ravaged immune system further complicating her ability to work out during the earliest days of the virus. “There was no way to even order equipment because everything was so backordered when everyone was trying to furnish their home gyms. I heard about athletes jumping over fences at midnight and taking equipment back to their house just to train,” she says. “It was chaos. But there was also a sense of relief that we could prioritize our health.”

Lowe is currently cancer-free. “I’m very hopeful and optimistic that the early detection really played a huge part,” she says. In the early days of the pandemic, she was afraid to go to the doctor, the risk of exposing herself to the coronavirus too terrifying. “More than one-third of people in the U.S. have missed a routine cancer screening due to COVID-19. But I realized these appointments are important—they are checkpoints for your progress to make sure you’re on track for your goal of being cancer-free,” she says. Lowe has survived, and now the second part of her vision—a fifth Olympics—is well within reach.

Macaela MacKenzie is a senior editor at Glamour. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.