The charismatic lead singer of Australian new wave band The Divinyls, Chrissy Amphlett, has died in her New York home of cancer and multiple sclerosis. She was 53. Above, “I Touch Myself,” the autoerotic anthem of ’80s teen females that became the Divinyls’ greatest hit.
Last month, on her Facebook page, she wrote about the experience of being a breast cancer patient since 2010:
“Unfortunately the last 18 months have been a real challenge for me having breast cancer and MS and all the new places that will take you. You become sadly a patient in a world of waiting rooms, waiting sometimes hours for a result or an appointment. You spend a lot time in cold machines… hospital beds, on your knees praying for miracles, operating rooms, tests after tests, looking at healthy people skip down the street like you once did and you took it all for granted and now wish you could do that. I have not stopped singing throughout all this in my dreams and to be once again performing and doing what I love to do.”
More: Divinyls singer Chrissy Amphlett dies. (ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, thanks Eliot)
More at Rolling Stone, and Reuters.
Once again, every single obit I just linked to there uses the trite phrase “battling cancer,” “fighting cancer,” or “lost her battle with cancer.” Once again, I will take the opportunity to remind the world that cancer is a biological process involving cells that refuse to do what they’re supposed to do inside our bodies, not a “fight” that the weaker souls among us “lose.” Please stop using that phrase.