Uhm. Ok. So for those of you who wondered why the hell all the girls on Facebook last night had colors as their statuses, you can rest easy.
Basically, they were posting the colors of their bras in "support" of breast cancer.
Let me just call BS right now. Again.
In what world is posting the color of your bra a kind of support for breast cancer? Now, it's one thing if you're like "Pink! BREAST CANCER AWARENESS FTW!" as your status. But that's not what these people were doing. Instead, someone decided to start a flirty trend that others mindlessly joined in on. Most didn't stop and think about what they were doing; they just posted the color of their bra.
And when I called BS on one of my friends, and mentioned how ridiculous it was to just post the color of your bra "in support" of something, I was called a killjoy and wet blanket.
Let me just say, "thank goodness for Mary Carmichael." In her blog on Newsweek, she lambasted the "pointless" trend and pretty much said everything that I did. THANK YOU, MARY. I'm glad another woman actually thought about what she was doing before just jumping on the "proclaim your bra color to the world" bandwagon. Telling your Facebook friends the color of your bra does not necessarily correlate to Breast Cancer UNLESS you stick the words "Breast" and "Cancer" in there somewhere. Or maybe all you need is "cancer." If you're just like "Blue!" then people might passingly glance at it as they scroll through the page, shrug, and not think much more of it. That's certainly what I did. And when I found out why people were needlessly talking about their underwear, I was actually sort of surprised (and a little disgusted) that so many intelligent people hadn't actually thought about why they were doing this.
The one good thing that came from this was an idea for a psychology experiment. You know those ones where they have a sign up that just tells you to do something ridiculous and people mindlessly obey without questioning? Those.
Now....here's a real attempt at spreading breast cancer awareness. Except it's mainly for men. I don't completely approve of using sexism to draw men into the fight against breast cancer, but apparently it works.
(On another note, what does that say about our society, I wonder? Hmm..... >_> )
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Found you through your comment at the Newsweek blog. Well said. I wrote about this too.
ReplyDeleteI saw your post there as well and I agree. I'm also a BC survivor.
ReplyDeleteHi there! I too found your link through the article. I have to say I completely agree. Even more than it being pointless and flirty (like Mary Carmichael said), it was only opening up these men reading all the status updates to fantasize and create mental images of said bras. And I frankly don't want to contribute to that. Quite a few of my friends doing this were young girls! I would hate to think that grown men are seeing these updates by 15 & 16 year old girls, telling what lacy undergarment they have on.
ReplyDeleteI don't think we need to post a color to raise awareness. Posting "Hey! Give yourself a breast exam!" would be a little more effective. ;)