Kirstin Pretorious has felt the shock of being diagnosed with breast cancer. She’s gone through the pain of chemotherapy. She’s also experienced through the strange sensation of looking at herself in the mirror and seeing someone unfamiliar looking back.
The Sydney mum-of-two tells Mamamia she got rid of her long blonde hair the night before she started her first chemo treatment.
“I decided to shave my hair before it fell out, so that I felt like I had some control,” she says.
“After I shaved my hair, I didn’t look like myself. None of my clothes looked the same. It’s amazing how your hair affects your whole appearance. Everything I put on, I looked so ridiculous. My wardrobe before was monochromatic simple lines, tight fitted clothes, and I didn’t look right.”
Pretorious decided she couldn’t spend months “hibernating” while she was going through treatment.
“I just thought, ‘I have to reinvent myself and make this work. I have to come up with a way that I can actually step outside with a degree of confidence.’”
She began wrapping herself in “bright sunshine pashminas” and putting on bright lipstick. Because wigs gave her a headache, she started experimenting with turbans and scarves. And, although she’d never been an earring person, she took to wearing them.
“I realised that if I didn’t have dangly earrings, there’s no balance,” she adds.
“Every day I would just experiment and see if it looked OK.”
Pretorious says reinventing her look has been a welcome distraction from her cancer treatment.
“It’s something else to think about. I think it’s been important for me to get up every day, put on some makeup, do something. It is a very depressing situation. It’s easy to slip into a dark place. And the medication, especially the chemo, makes you feel very dark.”
