Breast Cancer Awareness Satire

If only raising awareness about breast cancer wasn't so much work.

Image taken from The Onion

This satire of breast cancer awareness from The Onion isn't a far stretch from the reality, plus it notes some typical features of pink and objectifying breast cancer campaigns:

Staring = Caring -- Yeah, Right...

Many organizations and corporations would like you to believe that objectifying women is an effective, perfectly justifiable method to support women's causes. Before I rip apart the irony of this...

The latest disgusting campaign is "Staring = Caring" and its purpose is to support AIDS -- supposedly. The website invites us to scroll up a woman's provocatively posed legs while cheesy porn-like music plays in the background.

This is a project of Stop AIDS Now, what appears to be a legitimate, important organization. "Staring = Caring" links to the organization's website.

When I first learned about "Staring = Caring" and checked out the website, I was really ready to compare it to Boobstagram. Boobstagram invited women to share pictures of their breasts in lingerie to support breast cancer awareness.

But here's where it gets complicated: Stop AIDS Now appears to be doing very good work and provides lots of great awareness and calls to action on its website. So is it really fair to compare it to Boobstagram?

I just don't understand why a good organization that truly cares about women's issues would do something this insensitive. It's NEVER okay to objectify women, even if this campaign produces results. The sexual context of this campaign is especially insensitive given that one type of AIDS transmission is sex. But I can't help but feel that the sexual component of the disease actually prompted the creation of a sex-based campaign.

In our society, we don't seem to know how to talk about diseases that affect reproduction, specifically women's, without sexualizing them. Think about breast cancer. It has #boobstagram, all the pinktober "Save the tatas" and other bullshit, plus the "Where do you like it?" (Your purse) Facebook Status campaigns, just to name a few.

I feel like supporters of this type of trash feel justified in viewing this: "Well, hey, if I can masturbate for a good cause, why not." I will never be able to wrap my head around why soooooo many people don't see a problem with this.

Gender Issues of Pinktober and Movember

With pinktober and Movember behind us, I've been reflecting on some interesting similarities, correlations and themes between them. Most of these revolve around gender.

While researching both of these, I noticed many argue that Movember was the time to focus on men's health, as October was all about women: "You have pinktober; we have Movember." When women complained that Movember was exclusionary because women can't grow moustaches, male defenders of Movember argued: "We didn't protest against pinktober."

There's this idea that if you are against either campaign, you are against the gender it purports to serve and all for the other campaign. Kind of ironic when you consider that many people against Movember are socially conscious and hate pinktober for similar reasons they hate Movember.

Pinktober Exploits Women with Breast Cancer

If you read my blog, it's probably no surprise to you that I vehemently oppose pink breast cancer marketing, where products, services and NFL games are decked out in pink, supposedly to support women with breast cancer, but the barrage of pink is actually just a marketing tool to support the companies who use it.

I have read countless blog posts, news stories, Tweets, Facebook posts and even a book called "Pink Ribbon Blues" about this infiltration of pink and how it hurts women. I studied pink culture a bit in university. A popular documentary called "Pink Ribbons Inc. was released earlier this year, coincidentally (or not?) around the same time as the Komen/Planned Parenthood scandal.

Boobstagram Breast Cancer "Awareness"

It's depressing what can be justified under the veil of "awareness."

What now?