200 Books

If you are on Facebook you may have noticed the women posting colors as their status updates yesterday.  There was a little message going around, telling us all to post the color of our bra in order to “raise awareness for breast cancer.”  Now, in addition to the ambiguous wording which seems to be encouraging support of actual breast cancer (a vile disease), this little meme is part of a larger cultural issue which I felt needed to be addressed.

Awareness campaigns have a legitimate function: primarily to let people know of the existence and dangers of a disease and, how and when they should get screened for it; and secondarily to raise money for research into treatments for that disease.  They also have an illegitimate function.  Inoculating people against the need for real charity: self-sacrificing love of others.  Effortless, meaningless actions create a small warm glow of satisfaction and, while it is relatively short-lived, it is also real and much easier to achieve than genuine good works.  Loving people is hard, messy work.  Posting your bra color in your Facebook status is cute, a little sexy, and absolutely meaningless.

Today I conducted a small experiment.  I called every single woman in my cell phone directory (except my mother-in-law who works for St. Luke’s in breast cancer screening) and polled every woman I met while out running errands.  I asked them all three questions.

1. Are you aware of breast cancer? (Duh. I know. But that is kind of the point.)

2. What is the main screening test for breast cancer called?  (Mammogram.)

3. At what age should a woman start getting a mammogram regularly?  (I accepted anything between 40 and 50 as a correct answer.)

Of course, everyone was aware of the existence of breast cancer.  All but one knew what a mammogram was called.  And all but a handful were aware of the recommended age to start screening.  Anyone who didn’t know the correct age, thought that it was a younger age: meaning that they would be likely to check with their doctor before they actually needed to.  At this point in our society, we are sufficiently educated about and “aware” of breast cancer and breast cancer screening.

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All of this to say: enjoy the mildly thrilling little joke about the color of your undergarments if you like, but please don’t mistake a stunt for a good and charitable work.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 4:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.