By Abby Zimet / Common Dreams
From The Scar Project
Editor note: A recent Susan G. Komen San Diego study reports that “The shocking statistic of this particular report, is that while African-American women are less frequently diagnosed with breast cancer, in San Diego, they’re more frequently dying” …
Today we mark the low point of the breast cancer industrial complex’s already sketchy Pinktober – the month wherein insatiable capitalism touts spending money on all things pink “for the cure” – with National No Bra Day, the semi-pornographic, useless, entirely counter-intuitive “holiday” that calls for women to let their (blessedly healthy) breasts flow free in the name of ill women who are “scarred, radiated, burned, nauseated, and fighting for their lives.” No Bra Day, notes one observer, is “the latest way to do nothing about breast cancer.”
While the source of No Bra Day remains elusive – a semi-abandoned Facebook page maybe formed by horny guys? – its problem isn’t uncommon. Presenting a sexualized version of a notably unsexy disease, it mirrors other campaigns ostensibly for breast cancer awareness – from “Save the Boobies” to “Save the Ta-Tas” merchandise like t-shirts reading, “Save a life! Grope your wife!” – that focus on breasts, not the human beings who happen to be attached to them.
Happily, many people aren’t buying the inane idea that going braless will save lives, raise awareness or do fuck-all about cancer. One post on #NoBraDay: “Pert nipple selfies (are) not the reality of cancer.” To the creators of No Bra Day: This is bullshit. Women with breast cancer don’t need to see other women’s oblivious breasts. If you wanna help, donate to research efforts. Advocate for early detection. Offer support to women in treatment, or poor cancer patients, or families of patients. Work to build true awareness of what the disease is – God-awful, traumatic, poisonous, disfiguring, too often fatal – and what it is not – sexy. From Xeni Jardin: “The disease kills many of us, slowly, brutally. #NoBraDay mocks the dead, dying, & the living.”
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Amen.
Just say NO to “no bra day.”
OTOH, here’s a very positive article:
http://sdcitybeat.com/article-16708-Breast-assured.html
Thank goodness someone is finally saying this. As someone who wears the physical and emotional scars of surviving breast cancer, I find the whole campaign to “find a cure” obscene. How is wearing pink, or not wearing a bra, or buying toxic junk with pink labeling going to end breast cancer?
How dare these “organizers” and CEOs get rich off of my suffering! If you want to end breast cancer, don’t support the research for cures, support the exposure and removal of the causes. Why do women living in certain areas of the country have far greater percentages of breast cancer? Why are we still using toxins to “treat” roaches and termites when the statistics show women in households where pesticides were used regularly have a higher incidence of breast cancer? Why is it still being prescribed when there is even a doubt of its safety? How have we convinced millions of women to participate in a “race for a cure” when the the organization behind it is generating millions of dollars for pharmaceutical research but won’t say a word about what is causing the disease? Because breast cancer is BIG Business. There’s no money to be made in preventing it. But there are billions in “curing” it – all without a single thought of what it does to the women who endure the cure, “survive” it and die from it.