Awareness? How?

So, I’m sure by now most everyone with a facebook account, and many without, have noticed that in the last several days a vast majority of your female friends came together to “promote breast cancer awareness” but passing around a silly chain letter and posting the color of the bra they were wearing; while refusing to tell anyone what the heck they were on about when asked, male or female.

If you are like me, your probably raised the question, “How, exactly, does your ‘secretive’ posting of your bra color and then refusal to explain this silliness to anyone constitute raising awareness?” If you are like me and you did actually ask that question, you probably received a large pile of crap for it too, right? Besides, meaning no offense to anyone who has/had/knows somebody with breast cancer, isn’t breast cancer the single cancer we are MOST “aware” of?

I can’t walk into any public place, from grocery to clothing store, restaurant to to kitchen supply store, without seeing at the very least one item being hawked as promoting breast cancer awareness by simple virtue of the fact that it is pink. Seriously? Seriously? Please don’t misunderstand when I say this, but I think there are many other cancers that deserve some of that limelight and blatant consumerism shot their way. Take for instance a terrible cancer that effects children and which none (or next to none) survive: Neuroblastoma (Links to the blogs for Corey https://www.carepages.com/carepages/coreynickell/patient &Victor https://www.carepages.com/carepages/victorvillarreal both of whom are no longer with us.)

But if we must only pay attention to breast cancer, shouldn’t we at least really be doing something? So, I have decided (and cross-posted this idea facebook and twitter) that for every new comment or ping back I receive for this blog, I will donate $1 to the American Cancer Society.

Thanks.

Find the original at: http://nonadventures.com/2010/01/09/the-breast-intentions/

[EDIT: Please Note: I'm not against pink products at all as long as they do what they promise in the fair amounts. My problem lies more with the companies that raise the price to 150% the original, color the item pink, and then only donate 1 or 2% to research. By simply making it pink and being able to say "yeah, we donate..." they wind up making way more money by playing on people's emotions.

I'm not heartless or uneffected in this matter either; my cousin died at 32 by the hand of a particularly aggressive variety of breast cancer. But I've had my own sister attacked by cervical cancer (which is on the rise again), my grandma die of pancreatic cancer (one of the worst and least treatable cancers in adults), and my grandpa die from lung cancer (by some estimates the number one cause of cancer deaths in adults) and none of those get anywhere near as much attention these days. Or what about the fact that men can and do get breast cancer? We don't talk about that but my high school best friend lost her dad to breast cancer when we were 15 and he was still a young guy. Maybe instead of just saying we are raising awareness, we actually do? You know, teach about early detection and prevention or that men can get it as well? Or you know, maybe just give money directly to the cause?

Anywho, thanks for helping me set aside another dollar. It's funny how every girl I know could post their bra color but couldn't me bothered to click a "like" button on facebook. (Okay, I know that last one isn't fair since that chain mail was sent directly to people and I just posted mine up.)]

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~ by rain0rshine on January 10, 2010.