Mama Cax, who died in 2019, left her mark on the history of fashion: amputated from a leg as a teenager, she managed to make a name for herself in modeling.
The story of Mama Cax – whose real name is Cacsmy Brutus – is a lesson in courage: suffering from lung cancer and bone cancer at the age of 14, this young New Yorker who spent a much of his childhood in Haiti managed to tame his 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 held on. At 16, the disease had still not killed her, but doctors had to amputate her right leg following the replacement of her hip which her body was rejecting. A handicap which did not prevent her from fighting and carrying out her studies in New York, France, Tunis and also in Rome, she wrote on her website.
Mama Cax turned to modeling and fashion, one of her great passions, and owes her first major fashion show appearance to Michelle Obama, who invited her to the White House Fashion Show, in 2016. The following year , she becomes a professional model. In an interview for Glamour, she declares that she “fell in love with fashion because I realized that I was pretty when I covered everything” because she 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 discovers her on this occasion, when she parades with her prosthesis; but it is undoubtedly thanks to Rihanna that she reaches a level of international notoriety, the singer having asked her to parade for her Fenty Beauty event in 2019. When she died that year, the singer returned her tribute, speaking of her as “a queen, a force”.
It is over the years and parades that Mama Cax continues to broaden the spectrum of inclusivity in this often closed environment. “I had to pull myself together and realize that I’m in this space because they want me to be there, because I worked hard to be here and I deserve to be here” described the model to Glamour. It was one of her fights, the best representation of people with disabilities in the fashion industry. She wanted these people not to be defined by their disability, but as individuals: “The focus should not be on the disability, but on the person; that’s what is still missing,” she told the media.
Mama Cax died the same year, on December 16, 2019, at only 30 years old: cancer and numerous complications related to thrombosis in the stomach and her left leg. It was also 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 taking up the different challenges of life with success. It is with the same grit (fervor) that she lived her last days on earth”.
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 told. 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.