Bear with me for a moment, I'm not being flippant.
Who here is aware that breast cancer exists? A show of hands.
Okay, that's pretty much everyone, over 16. Who thinks we should raise awareness about breast cancer? Hands again. Of course, that's pretty much everyone. Who thinks that by posting the colour of your bra on your Facebook status will help raise awareness of this terrible disease? Really?
In case you haven't noticed women everywhere have been posting the colours of the brassieres as their status updates. A little quick research showed me that (at least in some cases) it was done to 1) raise awareness for breast cancer, and 2) confuse the boys.
Now I realize that I'm treading on dangerous ground here ("How can you possibly be AGAINST breast cancer awareness?") but half of this equation annoys me. I realize that a good part of this is good clean fun, on a viral scale, and I'm not in the least bit annoyed by that part. But some people are feeling pretty good right now for advancing the cause of breast cancer awareness even though nothing really has been done, short of some vague (I'd argue very vague) show of support.
The awareness that is needed is not that the disease exists, or even that it is terrible, and exacts a terrible toll on women and their families. The awareness that is needed is what women need to do to recognize the risk factors, and more importantly what they need to do for early detection of the disease.
You want to raise awareness, post your bra colour, or the circumference of your coffee cup, or whatever you want for the good clean fun part, but then post a link on how to do a breast self examination. Do your part for awareness, make people aware that they need to take steps to keep themselves healthy. You can do it while you have your good clean fun.
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15 responses
I’m not in the least annoyed. 🙂
I think you make a great point for upping the ante and posting some real information, but at the same time I doubt this game would have gone half so far if it had been more serious. That’s reality.
Although it’s true that people academically know that breast cancer exists, and are aware that it takes a toll on the families of victims, just getting the thought back into people’s brains and en masse can be a powerful thing. Why else would NPOs do awareness campaigns?
Breast cancer organizations have been particularly clever and that disease already has a very high profile. As the daughter of a breast cancer survivor, I’m pretty grateful for that.
I wonder if we’ll be hearing about where this particular bit of fun originated? Perhaps in March (which is national epilepsy month in Canada) I should try to start a similar campaign for epilepsy awareness. Epilepsy affect many times the number of people who get breast cancer, and it’s far less understood yet gets a fraction of the research funding. But it’s not nearly as “sexy” a topic. Hmmmmm…
I actually had to tone down my post Fawn, as I know this is being done mostly for fun, and I don’t want to come off all self righteous, or rather more self righteous.
But I question whether this really does get the problem back in people’s head. Also as you point out there are very few diseases that have a higher profile. I could be wrong but I think this level of awareness is more along the line of “Oh this is fun, and its for breast cancer so I’m doing good. Let’s see – Tiger stripes. There. I wonder what I should make for supper.”
Part of my original post was going to tie into viral emails (which thankfully only my mom sends to me these days, everyone else has either taken me off their email or is tired enough of my responses that they don’t send them anymore). So many of these (the chicken soup for the soul ones) are designed to make us feel better, for really no reason at all. This is basically the same thing. Its fun, its viral and in and of it self harmless fun. But then we have to add the part to make ourselves feel good for having this bit of fun “This is sneeky and a little risque AND I’m raising awareness for breast cancer”.
Part of the thing that annoys me is that the game WOULDN”T go so far if was more serious, but we have to add that whiff of seriousness to it. I know its a different kettle of fish, but a while back I got a viral email about how coughing rhythmically during a heart attack could save my life. It urged me to pass it on so I could save lives – and countless people had done just that.
It ignored the fact that while technically possible, it would take a lot of practice, and knowledge of sinus rhythms and was also potentially dangerous. While taking aspirin during or immediately after a heart attack and seeking immediate medical attention could save lives, or learning CPR and upgrading regularly could save someone else’s lives, there are no vital emails on that, just the dangerous mostly false ones.
While I don’t think that FB is going to save the world, or should be much more than entertaining (which this was) wouldn’t it be nice if every woman who posted her bra colour did a breast exam regularily, or had her blood checked yearly because she’s at risk of ovarian cancer, or recognized her child’s epilepsy? or or or?
As far as when this started I suspect pretty recently, the references I saw only went back until about the 5th of January. Where and by who would be much more difficult to figure out.
Tomorrow I am going to get Matt to post the colour of his underwear to bring awareness to prostate and colon cancers! heheheheh
For some reason I don’t think it would catch on. Breast cancer gets a lot of attention because hey, who doesn’t like a nice boob. But bums… now there is an area where our education is a little behind! I know, I know… I am not as witty as you or Meandering Michael… but I tried.
And Fawn- definitely use facebook in a month to do some awareness on epilepsy!
… I think you’ve covered all the things I wanted to add to this discussion. I’m also a survivor of breast cancer( yes, my number has been up twice…)but can’t buy into all of the gimmickry surrounding campaigns like this.
“Viral emails” love it!
Oh don’t even get me started. Yesterday on FB I said something along the lines of “I dunno what this color thing is but would you all stop it already!” and then it was ON. People can get so fighty.
I almost choked when I found out it was supposed to be to raise breast cancer awareness… give me a BREAK!!
I swear to god, if I said “HEY, lets all set our hair on fire for cancer awareness!!” ER’s around the globe would be full of fools updating the FB status on their mobiles.
I have over 300 people on my friends list, that makes for a LOT of colors in a day. Most of the women doing it don’t even know why, they are just following along another ridiculous Facebook thing blindly, because that’s what they do.
It’s like the “JOIN THIS GROUP IF WE GET 100000 MEMBERS THE EARTH WILL SPIN IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION!!”
or… “DON’T ADD JOE BLOW TO YOUR FRIENDS LIST BECAUSE HE WILL HACK YOUR FB AND FIND YOUR ADDRESS AND COME EAT YOUR BABIES!!”
I won’t even discuss the people who haven’t learned to hit SKIP when given the option to publish every single step they take in Cafe World or Farmville.
What irritates me most about Facebook and the majority of the people on it, is that they don’t realize that not everyone wants to see this stuff day in and day out.
Sorry I sort of skipped the whole issue you were actually talking about, what this whole thing is actually doing to raise awareness in regards to breast cancer. The answer is nothing, like you said… and half of them don’t even realize that’s what it’s meant to do. They are just like OH hey a good excuse to tell the boys on my list that I’m wearing a black bra. I hope it turns them on.
Say something with meaning, make a difference, or just keep quiet. That’s my opinon.
for me personally it brought the thought back up, and made me an active participant. I have on my own decided to be a little more diligent for breast exams and to find out how i can be more helpful to the cause myself. I know it won’t be that way for everyone but it is for me. It was something done in good spirits and it does raise some awareness. I don’t join frivolous groups and I don’t like spam in general (but i will admit to this weird farmville addiction…sorry i’m a flawed human i guess).
I think we should take the cause seriously, but not ourselves so much…really people, does it bug you so much people have a colour status?! I find it irritating when people post “At work” “At Home” daily.
I agree with the opinion that we can do more…we all can. And if we HADN’T posted the colours most people here would not have given any of this a second or third thought…so thank you to the person who sent it to me for opening up the topic.
I just want to thank you, because I had no idea why all of my friends were suddenly posting colours in their status. Clearly I’m out of the loop Facebook-wise.
That being said, I think I’ll keep the colour of my bra to myself and think about starting my annual fundraising for Relay For Life instead.
Fawn:
YES, epilepsy awareness. We should get something going.
Kara,
I don’t think I have Matt on FB. I’ll have to rectify that so I can see what colour it is. And that was a nice pun, but it is hard to top Michael he is like the god of puns.
Thanks allmycke. I was curious on what your take on this was, knowing you were a survivor.
Thanks Breigh (and as an aside – which I may have mentioned before – you’re the second Canadian ex-pat living in the Netherlands with a blog who stops by here from time to time. Something I find intriguing). Again I don’t take exception to the posting of the colours in and of themselves. Harmless fun, and if any of the males out there find themselves titillated by someone posting their bra colour on FB, well that’s just sad. But I do have an issue with the concept of this raising cancer awareness, as I stated above.
Hi Kathleen, I’m glad it did some raising of awareness, bringing it back on your radar so to speak. And don’t worry about that farmville addiction, we’re all flawed humans in some way or another.
All part of the service we offer here at the House and other Arctic musings Tuesy.
Yes, Fawn is on to something Megan.
Clare, your not thinking about this through the mind of a teenage or 20 something year old girl. Not that you should lol. Hello, we’re all self absorbed! It takes silly little games to make us stop and think “oh hey, maybe I should do a quick check for lumps today”. I know it doesn’t seem like that game did anything, but it sure made me stop for 10 seconds and do a self exam, because I forget to do it. I should do it everyday, but I don’t. I’m 26 and slightly lost in my own world. So yep last nights FB colour “game” did some good, even if it was just for me.
I don’t think too many cancers or serious diseases you can self check for, and I know that they won’t do regular mammograms until I’m at least 40. So it makes total sense to me to make a bunch of scatter brained young woman stop and think about it, even for 10 seconds.
You’ve probably hit on something Jen. My cultural bias if you will. I am amazed that it is actually creating some awareness, although I’d be interested in knowing just how many people who posted the colour of their bra actually took further steps like you.
Clare, you are not a facebook friend so i wanted to let you know that my status is now a has more information and is less frivolous…probably still viral as most things on facebook but i would like to consider it a happy medium:
Kathleen Still blue
http://www.cbcf.org/en-US/Home.aspx
http://www.breastselfexam.ca/
sorry for the typos…”..that my status now has more information and is less frivolous…” rather
Nice to see Kathleen.