Painted Brown
A few months ago, my right breast was dabbed and smeared with a brown liquid that I now know is povidone-iodine (thanks Google), though no one explained that to me at the time. It was part of the preparation I underwent for a biopsy on a mass of tissue found during my annual well woman exam and deemed suspicious by an ultrasound two weeks later. Those three weeks that careened from the doctor’s first “I feel something off” to “we need to take samples, this looks strange on the edges” at the ultrasound, followed by the actual procedure and then relieved phone call of a benign test result, passed in a fog as it happened. Most of those days were spent chanting the “nothing to worry about, until there’s something to worry about” mantra.
As one week post-op became two and then three, I finally started to think back on the procedure itself and ended up with the strangest thought. The biopsy wasn’t the first time my body has been painted brown. By some odd coincidence of life, I actually had prior experience with various body parts covered in brown (paint, those first times, not iodine).
The summer of 1997 I worked as an usher at the Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach. Serving as an usher each night was a great opportunity to learn about works of art from all over the world, which the Pageant of the Masters displayed as tableau vivant (living pictures). Using real people, costumed and painted, then arranged in life size replicas of famous art work, the Pageant allowed you to see Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, for example, in a southern California beach town. That summer I became one of the favorite substitutes for their recreation of the Julia Bracken Wendt 1914 sculpture, Three Graces, commissioned for and still housed in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. This beautiful bronze depicts the allegorical figures of history, art, and science as Grecian muses holding up an electric globe.
To assist the transformation of three young women into these “graces,” a separate section backstage was set aside. The first time I went up the narrow stairs to begin my transformation, I was told I would be wearing a strapless bra and bicycle shorts underneath the costume. For a shy seventeen-year-old this was the height of being adventurous.
Bike shorts on, strapless bra secured as best I could, and flip flops (provided) on my feet I emerged from behind the screen to where I would be painted before getting into the actual toga styled costume. They first put a moisturizer or foundation on my face and neck—something that vented the skin out and would help remove the paint afterward. Again, a whole new experience for me! I had never worn make up before, and was woefully inexperienced at methods for applying and removing anything like that.
With foundation on, the painting commenced. If I recall correctly, I think at least two people worked on me simultaneously. I recall someone used a brush to paint my leg, arms, and upper torso brown, while someone else had a sponge to apply the brown paint to my face and neck. (With proper stage lighting, my brown paint would look authentically bronze.) Being covered in paint is a strange experience. I remember the paint being cool, almost ticklish at first, and then getting used to the sensation. It felt somewhat heavy, as if a kind of blanket was covering my skin. When they touched up my nose the smell intensified and a little panic at being able to breath hit me. And then there was all the paint going between toes and fingers, in my arm pits, behind my ears, on my eyelids. This may sound strange, but I never realized how many crevices I had until they were painted brown.
Brown paint finally in place (and in so many places), I was then ready for the headpiece, which looked and felt like a rubber helmet. Last touchups of the brown face paint, and then into my brown toga. The toga was made of a heavy, canvas like material and because of the paint on my hands, I really couldn’t touch it too much to adjust it. I had a costumer who not only helped me get in to the toga, but who also walked to stage with me, making sure the costume didn’t snag, catch, or—most important—trip me. The backstage maze brought us out on the wings of the main stage. The “lamp” on which we three graces stood was positioned in the center of the stage and each of us were directed by stage hands to the correct spot. The costumers helped us get into the brown flip flops attached to the lamp and took our personal flip flops off stage with them. Stage hands made sure our hand and arm positions were correct as they matched real life me, and the two other young women who were my fellow muses, with photographs of the real sculpture. Last adjustments were tweaked to skirts, arms, head positions. And then, everyone else left. There was a moment. And the curtains parted.
Being watched by 2,600 people, while trying not to move a muscle for two and a half minutes, is an interesting experience. First, when not moving, trying to breathe as quietly, as shallowly as possible—two and half minutes is a really, really, really long time. Also, because they wanted everyone to see all sides of the sculpture—as if you were walking around it in person—our “lamp” spun (slowly) in the center of the stage. When the music began to fade and the applause began to rise, it was a signal that we were nearly finished. The costume assistant and stage hands came over and helped me step down onto the flip flops, and off we went.
In order to get the paint off my body, I would not only need to take the costume and headpiece off, I would need to take a shower, which they had set up in that same backstage area. They had a couple of curtained shower stalls, sponges and some high grade soap. But there was SO MUCH PAINT. Brown swirling paint coming off my legs, and my arms, and my torso and my neck. My face! And then I’d look again, and it was still between my toes and fingers. In my belly button. And the one area I ended up missing—didn’t even think of it—behind my ears. I confess, after that first time I clearly missed some other spots because that night some brown paint stains graced my bra. A souvenir of sorts, perhaps?
Strange to think that those handful of times my body became a work of art for two thousand people somehow prepared me for the experience of being a patient on an exam table, twenty-five years later. Just like my time as a statue, my biopsy came with “handlers” —the nurses who directed me to the right rooms or explained how I would need to undress and put on a certain gown a certain way. It was cold in the hospital, and when I checked in for the procedure they gave me a blanket to keep warm while I waited. I asked to keep the blanket with me, at least to cover my legs while they manipulated the top half of my body.
Once I was properly attired, the nurses came back in and helped me get into position on the gurney. It took two nurses to direct and guide me to the best spot—sort of like the stage hands placing me in the perfect “muse” position. When they moved the gown aside to properly place my breast, there was no sense of shame or embarrassment, because I had felt exposed like that back when I was a shy seventeen-year-old. The first touch of that cool liquid iodine was a bit startling, but looking back now, almost immediately became a familiar sensation. After the iodine got applied, the biopsy experience began to diverge from the Pageant experience.
Nurses were pushing and pinching and pulling all of that sensitive tissue to make sure they were getting the right spot. The doctor finally arrived to do the actual biopsy and the atmosphere changed. What had been a warm and collaborative experience quickly became regimented. The doctor was the general and we, nurses included, were all just carrying out his orders. I do appreciate that he explained the procedure beforehand, and especially that he warned me about the sound of the machine. The core needle used to drill into my tissue ground away like a pencil sharpener. After that you could hear a “ping, ping, ping” with each little collection being recorded, as if my tissue were video game points ticking higher and higher.
Almost as soon as it started, it was over. The doctor was out of the room in a flash and the three nurses bustled around moving the concluding process speedily along. The same young nurse who painted me in brown iodine began to wipe me up, through as I noticed when I sat up, there was a fair amount left. No shower facilities this time, so just like my bronze statue experience I carried home a brown colored souvenir in my bra. In fact, the first time I really connected the two experiences was when I got home and noticed the stain as I changed clothes. I had an instant flash to my Pageant days standing in my Mississippi closet.
I am so grateful and relieved that my biopsy results were benign that October. Still, it has led to the consensus among my various doctors that I’ll need to be monitored closely for the next few years, just in case. That means the possibility exists for other biopsies in my future. I guess if I ever need to have this procedure again, I know what I’m in for now, and I’ll remember: no more white bras.
-Kathleen McGuire
Kathleen McGuire has a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Riverside, which opened up opportunities to teach at universities in Tennessee, Michigan, and now Mississippi. She also worked at museums and archives in California and Michigan. Kathleen loves sharing stories from the past with students and the public. Her free time is spent with her husband, Isaac, and two dogs, Leo and Marvin.