As some of us will know from personal experience, or from projects like Angelo Merendino’s photo series following his wife during her battle, cancer is absolutely one of the worst things in the world.

With breast cancer, survivors can be left feeling low on body image as a mastectomy is often the only treatment available to save a life, whereas others go through with the procedure purely as a preventative measure (e.g. Angelina Jolie). This means literally sacrificing a part of what makes you physically a woman to carry on living.

There are re constructive surgeries available, which is obviously great. Some however opt for tattoos instead, which as you’ll see in the following picture series not only hides the scars left behind by the surgery, but also look completely badass.

Navigate the slider to check out some examples…