October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
The opinions represented in this article do not necessarily represent those of the staff of CUIndependent.com nor any of its sponsors.
Are you noticing some strangely sexual Facebook statuses from your friends lately?
“I like it on the floor.”
“I like it on the bed.”
“I like it on the table.”
When I first opened my Facebook page and saw the news feed packed with these types of statuses, I thought, “What on Earth is this pop culture reference that I seemed to have missed out on?”
Luckily, a friend from high school posted a link detailing the reasoning behind this rapid-fire Facebook phenomenon: In honor of October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month, people have been encouraging one another to post “odd” statuses saying where they like to place their purses in order to cultivate awareness.
Using language that suggests something sexual is a great way to pique a reader’s interest, and social networking sites certainly are an effective way to reach out to an innumerable amount of people.
But this is attracting attention for the wrong reasons. The statuses may be funny, but breast cancer is not. No type of cancer is.
Watching my mother go through radiation therapy treatment as she was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was only 13 was not funny. Nor was watching her struggle through drug regimes, exhaustion and sickness.
Perhaps the use of this type of language in your status will encourage your Facebook friends to investigate a little further and learn that this is about awareness, not sex. I sure hope so. I just find this hard to believe when men are beginning to change their statuses as well.
With so many women affected by this cancer every year, naturally countless numbers of men will be affected as well. But when they begin posting statuses along the lines of “I like it in your hands”, these statuses begin to read with an air of mockery.
Last year, changing Facebook statuses in order to raise awareness was just as popular. Women were changing their statuses to the color of their bras or underwear, a less sexually suggestive route, but still not raising awareness in a truly beneficial way.
True awareness is telling your girlfriends to self-examine and to make sure to ask their physicians about mammograms.
All I ask is that in light of these statuses, we don’t lose sight of the fact that this disease needs true and honest awareness-especially when one in eight women will develop invasive breast cancer over her lifetime, and 39,840 women in the U.S. are expected to die in 2010 from this cancer.
I like it…if it’s being investigated and worked with in medical research labs. Only in medical research labs.
For more information on breast cancer statistics and awareness visit breastcancer.org.
Contact CU Independent Breaking News Editor Sarah Simmons at Sarah.e.simmons@colorado.edu.
2 comments
I think you have it all wrong. I understand what you saw your mom go through was not funny as I had to do it with my “second mom” as well. I loved this idea as it did get people thinking about breast cancer, which is exactly what everyone is trying to do. Getting awareness out is something that you need to be creative about.
In your article it says that men are doing it too, men can also get breast cancer and if you did not know some men also have people close to them who have been diagnosed with breast cancer at one time or another. Who is to tell them they cant help out?
You need to rework your negative article, because breast cancer awareness is not something to be negative about, Remaining optimistic is something people pride themselves on, and when my second mom was diagnosed with breast cancer all she wanted was to get awareness out and stay happy during it, Anything that made her smile was worth it, and this is just one example.
Your pain is obvious, but you need to re-frame and get a better point of view. This is about awareness and even if some people are mocking it, they are aware of it and is that not the whole point? This is about awareness and it is getting the job done. You on the other hand, are not.
We’re all aware of breast cancer. It’s terrible, and we’re all aware of it. But just because it’s something that (for the most part) only women develop, it doesn’t need to be synonymous with the feminine cause. I’m sick of being deemed “anti-feminist” because I’m fairly content with the state of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. This ultra-feminist movement led congress to approve the “women’s healthcare act” requiring insurance companies to pay for yearly mammograms. A practice that has been proven to do more harm than good. I realize that I’ll never get breast cancer, and that it’s a real fear for some (most?) women out there, butstop raising awareness through the utopian feminine veil.