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Monday, January 11, 2010

I don't know if you guys have facebook, or if you have noticed yet, but lately all the women (and some of the jokester men) have been posting neutral (and some not so neutral) colors on their statuses. If you haven't heard or learned the reason yet, or don't get it, these women have failed. The statuses are the colors of their bras. Yes, their bras. Still don't understand? By putting the colors of their bras in their statuses, these women were hoping to raise breast cancer awareness, and they were planning on making the men wonder why they were putting colors in their statuses. Now, this is a bad way to raise awareness for breast cancer on many levels.

  • Colors are arbitrary adjectives. They can be used to describe anything. By making your status a singular word, the only thing you are succeeding at is confusing people about the subject you deign most important, the subject that you are most passionate about, the subject you have actually concealed by confusing everyone. Assuming we are going to stick with keeping the bra theme, a better way to support breast cancer awareness would be to post the noun that the adjective is describing and maybe state the reason for posting this. For example: "I am wearing a pink bra today to support breast health and to remind all the women in my life to get their annual breast check this month." This way, the person posting is stating his or her cause, while also sticking with the theme of doing something cutesy that relates to the cause.
  • By discussing the color of bra one is wearing, one is drawing attention to the breasts. In doing so, the person speaking is objectifying herself, calling attention to her body as an object, and away from the real issue, which most participants would claim to be breast cancer. This is similar to the new "Save the Tatas" commercial that the Breast Cancer society has launched on the United States.

    Link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQI1tzkwpkI

    If you notice, roughly ninety percent of the video focuses on the woman's body and the reactions of the people standing around. Only ten percent is spent on the woman's face. This video, and the title of the ad campaign ("Save the Tatas" or "Save the Boobs") make the cure for breast cancer about saving the breasts, and not about saving the person, they take away the face of the person, her true identity. In line with trying to correct the objectification of the women in these ad campaigns in the first point, to correct this, I would suggest a commercial that focuses on the woman and her family, not the woman's body, or how other's react to the woman's body. Breast cancer comes in many forms, from large-chested women to small-chested women, from young to old, from big to small. It is rather random, and I think that the ideal awareness commercial demonstrate that any woman can be a victim of breast cancer.

  • My final point, about why this was a dumb exercise, is that no other cancer gets as much publicity as breast cancer. Pancreatic cancer is certainly more deadly, and claims more people. We have feminists and women who all want equal rights to men, but they continue to single out the leading cancer in women only? What's the correction for this? Start publicizing for men to get prostate checks. Tell people to have their lungs scanned for masses every five years or something, tell people to check out the insides of their mouths, ect. Bring the same amount of awareness to the other forms of cancer.

I support breast cancer, but I am not about to participate in some silly, self-revealing task that has absolutely nothing to do with breast cancer.

On another note, I spent the day with my mom today. We went shopping, deposited my paycheck (YAY!), got my hair fixed (one side was longer than the other), and went shopping. I got a teapot/cup set, you know the cool ones with the teapot that sits on top of the cup, and you take it off to pour the tea. It was three dollars, along with four books that were half price (meaning, like, $1.00 and $0.50 books) including volume two of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE! EXCITING, ESTATIC, AND FULL OF PLAGIRISM! Bet you all did not know that Shakespeare stole his work from Seneca, who stole from the Greek playwrights! Yeah, it's a big conspiracy theory with lots of evidence. You should read my paper for theatre history for all the points. So, according to Shakespeare, it's okay to steal writings from a dead Roman playwright (that would be Seneca) and publish them as your own, but it is not okay to steal your dead brother's wife and make her your own? Haha, yeah, literary joke.

Boyfriend and I are back together! YAY! In said thrift store, I also found something new for his Valentine 's Day gift. It's nothing big, but I figure it's something he needs. :) He decided to use Prefixes for a song!

Anyway, nothing really that new this week. I got sick, and had to stay home from work for two days. I have three more shifts between now and Sunday, and then I go back to school and start classes on Monday. Luckily, I found a copy of Anna Karenina in the bookstore in the Channel Town nearby for my Russian Lit. class, and I've started on it so I don't have as much reading to do once classes start, but it isn't very interesting, and I get distracted easily. I think I have ADD sometimes. For example, I can't just watch movies now, I need to be doing something on top of watching the movie, like playing minesweeper. Until next week,

JMA

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