"Fastest Woman with a Double Mastectomy" Louise Butcher runs topless to show the ‘positive side’ of life after breast cancer surgery: "You’re living"Louise Butcher, 51, runs marathons topless to help “normalize mastectomy” without reconstructionThe mom of two says running topless is “empowering” and makes her appreciate how her body was able to heal“What I wanted to do is to normalize mastectomy,” the marathon runner from North Devon, England, tells PEOPLE.
But for Butcher, who ran the London Marathon topless this year, “it felt quite free” to run topless, without breasts “banging around, and I quite liked being flat.” In Butcher’s case, she had an aggressive cancer that didn’t even show up on a routine mammogram she had just weeks before she found a “tiny little lumpy piece” during a self-exam two years ago.
“I had to sort of evolve into something else without them,” she says of life without breasts. “When I started topless running, that made me accept it even more because of the way that I was empowering and accepting myself and showing other people myself.”She said the decision to run the London Marathon topless in April 2024 came after “I thought I'd like to see someone out there living life — being a full woman — without them. Just showing that you're strong.