Awareness

As a resident of the current century, I am fully aware that breast cancer (among MANY other kinds) exists in the world. Hell, I'm a dragon boater.. so I get a huge double whammy of this message during boating season because so many of the teams are cancer survivors. This is great to see, btw, there are a lot of older women out there who can totally kick my ass at paddling, and it gives me a goal for when I'm an old lady too. But, I digress...

Yesterday, just about all 40 or so of the women who are my facebook friends had their status set to the colour of their bra as a statement for "breast cancer awareness". I was a little confused at first; who in this day and age is NOT aware of breast cancer? Anyone who has breasts certainly knows about it. I'm pretty sure that anyone who LIKES breasts is aware of it. Anyone who likes someone who HAS breasts probably does as well.

What this silly little meme failed to take notice of however is.. MEN get breast cancer too! Oh sure, not nearly as much as women do, but it happens. I think that holding up breast cancer as some kind of all-girls club is pretty damn insensitive to humans in general. Many of us female types would be pretty devastated to lose a man in our life to this disease too.

The other thing that seriously bothered me about this meme was that it didn't DO anything. Virtually flashing my unmentionables doesn't help anyone find a cure; at the very best it's a titillating look into someone's lingerie drawer. So, consequently I didn't post the colour of my brassiere for a hundred or so people to see. I felt like the whole thing had been set up by a horny teenaged boy to get information about girls undies; it felt icky.

Although far ickier, I couldn't help but think of all the PETA ads I've seen that have naked or sometimes merely half-naked women in exploitive situations all to protest meat consumption or animal cruelty. Sometimes I really don't see the connections that people claim to be making.