Top model, but above all and above all an activist for the rights of people with disabilities, who is Mama Cax honored by Google this Wednesday, February 8, 2023? A look back at the incredible story of this young woman who died in 2019.
Mama Cax. This name means nothing to you ? On the occasion of Black History Month, Google has decided to pay tribute to this fashion figure with an atypical profile. From her real name Cacsmy Brutus, Mama Cax is an American-Haitian model and a fervent activist for the rights of people with disabilities who was born in 1989 and died, at only 30 years old, in December 2019 as a result of his cancer and many complications. During her life, Mama Cax notably distinguished herself by defying the standards of beauty. A leg amputee, she is known to have paraded with an artificial leg.
Mama Cax was a nickname, a shell. “Mama Cax is my alter ego who is much older and more sophisticated”, declared the young woman to The Standard. Cacsmy Brutus had chosen this pseudonym to “reinvent” himself, to make a new start. The young woman had a complicated journey, but she knew how to make it a strength. Model and blogger, she defended the rights of people with disabilities and also inclusiveness in the fashion world.
Mama Cax died on December 16, 2019, aged just 30. In question ? Cancer and many complications related to thrombosis in the belly and his left leg. It was on Mama Cax’s Instagram account that her family had decided to give her a last vibrant tribute: “To say that Cax was a fighter would be an understatement. As a cancer survivor, she had become accustomed to meeting the different challenges of life with success. It was with the same grit (fervor) that she lived her last days on earth.”
In one of his last posts instagram, Mama Cax said that while traveling in London, she had felt “severe abdominal pain”. Once at the hospital, the doctors had discovered “several blood clots in [sa] leg, [sa] thigh, [son] abdomen and near an IVC filter near [ses] lungs (a medical device that prevents clots from entering the lungs)”.
Suffering from lung cancer and bone cancer at the age of 14, this young New Yorker, who spent a large part of her childhood in Haiti, had, for a time, managed to tame her illness. While the diagnoses of the experts had condemned her and did not let her hope to live more than a few months, Mama Cax had held her ground. At 16, the disease still hadn’t taken her down, but doctors had to amputate her right leg following a hip replacement that her body was rejecting. A handicap which will not have prevented him from fighting and carrying out his studies in New York, France, Tunis and also in Rome, she wrote on her website.
Mama Cax quickly turned to modeling and fashion, one of her great passions. She owed her first major fashion show appearance to Michelle Obama, who invited her to the White House Fashion Show in 2016. The following year, she became a professional model. In an interview for Glamourshe said she “fell in love with fashion because [qu’elle avait] accomplished [qu’elle était] pretty when [elle couvrait] everything”. Mama Cax suffered from her physical appearance.
In 2018, she paraded for Becca McCharen and her brand Chromat, during New York Fashion Week. The fashion world really discovered her on this occasion, while she paraded with her prosthesis. But it is undoubtedly thanks to Rihanna that she reached a level of international notoriety. The singer had indeed asked her to parade for her Fenty Beauty event in 2019. When she died that year, the singer paid tribute to her, speaking of her as “a queen, a force”. Actress and host Jameela Jamil wrote of her friend that it was “an honor to [la] know and witness [s]we can and [s]we elegance”.
On his blog, the model shared her beauty advice and good addresses and confided her moments in life. For example, she recounted her struggle to accept herself: “I am on the long road to self-love and there are many obstacles to overcome,” she said. After her operation, Mama Cax told The Standard that she “had a hard time accepting a new body and loving it. I embarked on a journey to try to reach a place where I felt happy, but I was far from suspecting that I would take so many people on this journey with me“, she replied.