Elly Mayday

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Elly Mayday in A Perfect 14

Elly Mayday , née Ashley Shandrel Luther , (born April 15, 1988 in Aylesbury , † March 1, 2019 in Vancouver ) was a Canadian model and multiplier for women's health. Known for her fight against ovarian cancer , she was often photographed with surgical scars and chemotherapy- induced baldness.

youth

Ashley Shandrel Luther was born on April 15, 1988 and grew up with three brothers on a farm near Aylesbury , a village of just 50 people in Saskatchewan . Her family grew crops, raised cattle, horses, pigs, and chickens, and ran a restaurant. Her mother was an artist. Mayday went to boarding school at the age of 13, studied gender studies and psychology at university, and then lived with her brother in Vancouver.

Model career

Elly Mayday in A Perfect 14

When she was 23, she worked as a flight attendant for Sunwing Airlines , overseeing charter flights to Cuba , Mexico and Jamaica . She also tried to work as a model. She adopted her stage name, Elly Mayday, a combination of Elly May Clampett , a tomboy with the character of a pin-up girl from The Beverly Hillbillies , and the aviation emergency call term . She was told she was not tall or thin enough as the traditional model at 1.73 m, but her 34-29-44 inches (86-74-112 cm) measurements were ideal for pin-up models. She won a local auto show competition and was the main subject of an award-winning documentary about her cancer and modeling careers titled A Perfect 14 , which was related to her dress size.

Her first symptoms of cancer were excruciating pain in her lower back and abdomen, accompanied by pressure in her lower abdomen, recurrent bladder infections and a constant feeling of malaise. So she went to the emergency room four times. The treating doctors did not consider cancer because of her age. Instead, they told her that her symptoms were a result of their weight, and advised her her body to train and strengthen. As a result, she lost 14 kg, but her pain persisted.

The ongoing auditions were successful, so in early 2013 she became a model for Forever Yours, an all-size lingerie manufacturer in Vancouver . Her symptoms increased in the summer of 2013 and she returned to her doctors saying that she would refuse to work until the diagnosis was made. As a result, at the age of 25, she was diagnosed with a malignant tumor on the ovary , which is very rare in women under 40.

Elly Mayday underwent four surgeries, including a hysterectomy , which left scars, and three months of chemotherapy , which made her bald. Still, she continued her work as a model and decided to use her baldness and scars to talk about her cancer. Sonya Perkins, the owner of Forever Yours, hesitated at first but said the campaign was a success. Photos of Mayday with a bald head and surgical scars have drawn tens of thousands of followers on Facebook. She also received an international modeling deal with Jaclyn Sarka , the founder of JAG Models in New York City, who saw her photos on Instagram before learning of her cancer diagnosis.

She was originally categorized as a plus-size model , a label that she turned down, saying that with a size 14 (EU 44) and height she was normal proportions. Over the course of a year and a half of her cancer treatment, Mayday lost 27 kg until she was a size 10 (EU 40) at 54 kg, which she believed caused “skinny shaming” on social media. Some of her former fans or friends accused her of making money and becoming famous with her cancer.

In July 2014, she was told that she was cancer free. She then flew to Australia to take part in a campaign for the Australian Women's Weekly . She was one of six models featured in Lane Bryant's #ImNoAngel campaign in April 2015 , which featured women with atypical proportions for models. Her unretouched surgical scars could be seen in the photos. In June 2015, Mayday's cancer returned and she had a fifth operation to remove another tumor. She also posted pictures of the operation on Instagram and called her scars " beauty marks" but stopped calling herself cancer free from then on.

Mayday worked as a model in New York until her illness recurred in 2017 and she returned to Canada. In 2017, Mayday was the face of Canadian plus size clothing store Addition Elle to raise funds for Ovarian Cancer Canada. She has shared on Instagram about the difficulty of her treatments, including pictures of her exhaustion and videos talking about vomiting and chemotherapy.

In 2018 she wrote an article for Flare magazine about her hysterectomy that prevented her having children. It was the first of their major operations. She had planned to have five children at some point, so after she was diagnosed with cancer, she consulted a fertility specialist to see if her eggs could be removed. Since the medication she was taking would have accelerated the progression of her cancer, she decided against it. “I have to take care of the young girls who need me or who need that voice. This is my way of bringing up my children right now, ”she told the CBC .

death

Her illness had progressed greatly in the last few months and the doctors were unable to cure anything. A high school friend who flew in to see her said Mayday had accepted death. She died in Vancouver on March 1, 2019, at the age of 30. Mayday's Facebook fan page soon had nearly 500,000 followers.

Web links

Commons : Elly Mayday  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elly Mayday on Instagram: 'Elly Mayday's given name was Ashley Shandrel Luther. She was born on April 15, 1988 in Saskatchewan, Canada. Ashley what deeply loved by her ... .
  2. ↑ a b c d Saskatchewan-born model, advocate Elly Mayday dies at 30 , CBC News . March 4, 2019. Retrieved March 15, 2019. 
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Plus-sized model Elly Mayday on loving her body and facing cancer . In: Châtelaine , June 2017. Retrieved March 15, 2019. 
  4. ↑ a b c d e Elly Mayday: My battle with Ovarian Cancer . In: Australian Women's Weekly . Retrieved March 5, 2019. 
  5. ↑ Elly Mayday - Dorothy Combs . Archived from the original on March 6, 2019. Retrieved March 15, 2019.
  6. ↑ a b c Plus Model Elly Mayday Continues to Pose Despite Bald Head, Scars , ABC News . January 21, 2014. Retrieved March 15, 2019. 
  7. ↑ a b c Plus-Size Model: Doctors Blamed My Chronic Pain on My Weight - But It Was Cancer . In: People , October 24, 2015. Retrieved March 5, 2019. 
  8. ↑ a b c Doctors Blamed This Model's Pain on Her Weight But She Actually Had Cancer . In: Cosmopolitan , October 23, 2015. Retrieved March 5, 2019. 
  9. ↑ a b c Model Elly Mayday determined to battle cancer again . In: CBC News , June 4, 2015. Retrieved March 15, 2019. 
  10. ^ A b Bald and beautiful: BC model with cancer hopes to inspire . In: CTV News , January 6, 2014. Retrieved March 15, 2019. 
  11. ↑ Elly Mayday: Canadian Plus-Size Model Opens Up About Ovarian Cancer . In: Flare , June 4, 2017. Retrieved March 15, 2019. 
  12. ↑ Saskatchewan model takes part in #ImNoAngel campaign . In: CBC News , April 15, 2015. Retrieved March 4, 2019. 
  13. ^ Elly Mayday announces cancer diagnosis . In: The Australian Women's Weekly , June 7, 2015. Retrieved March 15, 2019. 
  14. ↑ This Isn't Just a Scar From Ovarian Cancer — It's a Beauty Mark . In: Self , March 28, 2017. Retrieved March 5, 2019. 
  15. ↑ Plus-size model shares how she's learned to love her ovarian cancer scar . In: Metro , March 30, 2017. Retrieved March 5, 2019. 
  16. ↑ An advocate for ovarian cancer awareness, Elly Mayday died Friday . In: Regina Leader-Post , March 4, 2019. Accessed March 6, 2019. 
  17. ↑ Canadian Model Elly Mayday Fronts Addition Elle's BRAve Campaign To Fight Ovarian Cancer . In: HuffPost Canada , June 15, 2017. Retrieved March 5, 2019. 
  18. ↑ This 30-Year-Old Model Documents Some of Her Most Difficult Moments in the Hospital After Learning Her Ovarian Cancer Returned . In: Health , July 12, 2018. Retrieved March 5, 2019. 
  19. ↑ Young Infertility: I Lost the Ability to Have Kids at 25 . In: Flare , April 23, 2018. Retrieved March 5, 2019. 
  20. ↑ Elly Mayday talks ovarian cancer for #ladyballs event in Regina . In: CBC News , March 22, 2016. Retrieved March 5, 2019. 
  21. ↑ Body positive model Elly Mayday dies at 30 from ovarian cancer . In: Yahoo News , March 5, 2019. Retrieved March 15, 2019. 
personal data
SURNAME Mayday, Elly
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Shandrel Luther, Ashley (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian model
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1988
PLACE OF BIRTH Aylesbury, Saskatchewan , Canada
DATE OF DEATH 1st March 2019
Place of death Vancouver , British Columbia , Canada