It's not about the boobs

[eumelia]

So October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and everything is covered in pink.

As a lover of pink, especially the pale rose pink ("baby pink"), I enjoy the colours that seem to be ubiquities this time of year.

I wear a little breast cancer awareness pin all year round on my bag and my mom gave me another one to wear on my shirt for this month.
It doesn't hurt and I bringing attention to the disease is important.

But I hate the campaigns. I love the pink, but I hate the fact that the disease, in these campaigns, has been reduced to tits.

The continuous use of the breast as a sex organ in these campaigns, how one's tits are the thing that needs to be (please pardon the unintentional pun) supported, the splicing of the person from the organ in which the cancer develops... as though they are separate entities.

It's frustrating that this is how breast cancer is being "sold", because it has become a consumer market, of selling pink everything in which a margin of the profits go to cancer research - science capitalism style.

And god forbid I criticise anything that aids in bringing the end to cancer quicker.

Meh, I don't know. I'm being petty, I know and kind of a brat. But when I think about my future, my sister's future, my BFF's future in which breast cancer is a very likely occurrence - I resent that my boobs are appropriated from the fact that it is the entire body that is sick and the whole person needs to be supported.

Not just my tits, which are supported just fine by my bra, thanks.

(That pun was intentional)

Comments

[herlander_refugee]

I think your discomfort is perfectly understandable. Tits are SO the symbol of an objectified woman in our culture! And yes, the disease attacks the entire woman---as does, in a way, the cure. But it often seems all anyone notices is the empty spot in her sweater (so to speak) afterwards.

An unfair diminution, don't you agree.

[eumelia]

I do agree.

[finch]

Eh, maybe you're being petty, but I agree with you completely.

[eumelia]

Glad I'm not alone.

[silveradept]

Considering I'm sure that men would not enjoy being reduced to their prostates to promote awareness on that one (no, instead we make comments about how your manliness will not be violated if you let your doctor probe to make sure you're healthy), I think we can do better than making breast cancer only about preserving breasts, instead of promoting health and survival.

Not to mention I've seen some very creepy lines come out of this kind of campaign, the kind that hit on someone by asking to check their boobs for cancer.

[eumelia]

Yes, the pervasiveness of sexual harassment narrative in these pop-campaigns is awful.

[ironed_orchid]

I've seen enough creepy comments about breasts in the name of increasing breast cancer awareness to completely agree.

[eumelia]

Yep. Nothing to add.

[delight]

My mom's got cut off, but she's still got the cancer even post-mastectomy! Are we to care less for her than say, for me, still with two breasts but counting down to the diagnosis?

I don't buy any of that stuff and out of respect to my family, neither do our friends - they give money directly to research, which is The Right Way if you ask us (we all work in healthcare).

(I have *so* many relevant links, but I'm commenting from a phone so this comment is faily and uninformative. Sorry!)

[eumelia]

It's all right, I am informed and we donate directly to research too. Any pink thing, other than the pins that are given out at the out patient women's health clinic at the local hospital, is usually given as a gift to us by someone - not any more, as my mom doesn't have cancer any more.

But, yeah, the whole making the disease "sexy" is more than irksome, to say the least.

[lilacsigil]

Yes, there's a lot of discussion online about reducing women to breasts, and about campaigns saving "breasts" rather than actual women. I'm glad we haven't seen much of that in Australia (yet). Our current campaign is a picture of a large family sitting supportively around an older woman with the slogan saying that when one person suffers breast cancer, the whole family does. I think that's much better!

Work on any cancer helps the rest of us with rarer cancers, though, so I don't mind the pink. Just the "save the boobs" campaigns.

[eumelia]

Yeah, your campaigns sound very sweet. I kind of wish we had that kind of message, I don't I handled my mom's disgnosis very well at the time, despite the fact that she's cancer free now. Then, I felt really selfish for feeling bad for myself, rather than just for her.