Friday, January 8, 2010

Breasts, Cancer, Feminism and Internet Memes

I have a strong dislike for this particular FB meme where women are supposed to name the color of their bra as a way to raise awareness about breast cancer. As this wonderful blog post reminds us, the meme is actually a slap in the face to many survivors who no longer wear bras because they have had mastectomies.

My maternal great-grandmother was a breast cancer survivor, as is my MIL. My nana had a single mastectomy in the 30s or 40s when cosmetic reconstruction was unheard of and her scars were just awful. She wore a prosthetic breast that was inserted in to specially made, very expensive bras (that only came in one color).


The cutesy awareness things really push my buttons. It is maddening that to get any kind of attention or research it seems like we have to make women's health issues cute and/or sexy. We should save the boobs because men like to play with them! Not that we should save women's lives because women's lives are inherently valuable!

There's a similar thing on twitter with the hashtag boobiewed where women (and men, peripherally) are encouraged to changed their av to show off their cleavage in some variation of "save the tatas." Maybe I'm just some humorless feminist, but I resent that the way to raise awareness about a disease that kills and injures women at such an alarming rate is to be cutesy and sexy and remind everyone what lovely playthings our breasts are. And, don't get me wrong, I LOVE my breasts. I own maybe 2 shirts that would not be considered low-cut, I love my big push up bras and I love my cleavage and I show it off all the time. But I won't do it to pander for "awareness" and money and attention to go to research. That shit should happen because we value lives, not because someone flashes us some boobs.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I agree. Apparently, "awareness" is short for "awareness that TEH LAYDEEZ, THEY HAS BEWBS, and DID YOU KNOW THERE IS CANCER FOR BEWBS?"

How bout awareness of what breast cancer actually entails for actual human beings, not just Teh Bewbs?

KrisMrsBBradley said...

Of course everyone has their own opinion on memes and such (most of them are stupid, lol) but I have to say, this one actually did get some people aware. The Susan G. Komen facebook site went from 150 fans the week that meme hit to 150,000 fans. That's a pretty significant boost of people checking it out.

So as stupid as it was, it did get the info to at least a few people. That's got to be a good thing.

 

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