Curing Cancer With Your Bra

In the illustrious history of Rick rolling, surprise kitty and, my personal favorite, the send-this-to-everyone-you-know-and-Microsoft-will-send-you-a-check-for-a-million-dollars e-mail, a new Internet meme has emerged and it is good. If by "good" you mean "hilarious" - which I always do.

If you were on Facebook this weekend and are a girl, you probably got an e-mail akin to this one:

Something fun is going on! Just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the colour, nothing else. Send this message on to ONLY girls --no men. It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status.

If you were on Facebook this weekend and are a non-stupid man, you probably got a good snicker... until you read that your mom's status update was "black lace with red satin choker."

Upon receiving this e-mail* I immediately saw my girlfriend's statuses lighting up like rainbows and, like the creative girls my friends are, they were rarely limited to "just the colour, nothing else." My friends described their undergarments in such fascinating detail that I felt like we had taken our relationship to a whole new level - the Girl's Gone Wild one.

Wanting to be in on all the fun, my fingers hovered over my keyboard ready to chime in when two thoughts occurred simultaneously: 1) Nursing bras are boring and 2) This might be the best frat-boy prank ever.

You know me - I am not shy about talking about my bra when the context warrants it - but something about this particular meme smacked of the adolescent days when boys snapped bra straps and girl's bras were considered the most magical pieces of cloth invented - even surpassing the Borat thong with their powers. Did you tell a boy the color of your bra just because he asked? Of course not. That ruined the mystique.

But boys have grown up and this time they added the "cancer awareness" tag to the tired come-on. Call me the Facebook Grinch (do I get a t-shirt?) but I don't see how this helps cancer patients or research at all. Is there anyone, male or female, who is not aware of breast cancer? Bras may be magical but I'm pretty sure they haven't invented one yet that cures cancer. (Side note: breast cancer is not the #1 killer of women. Heart disease is. It's not even the #1 cancer of women. That honor goes to the unsexy lung cancer.) When I expressed my grinch-i-tude on Facebook, one friend (whom I love even more knowing that she wears a purple polka-dot bra on a bleak Friday in January) said, "If it gets one woman to do a breast self-exam then it is worth it." She has a point. But I ask you, did any of you give yourselves a firm pat down upon reading a friend's bra color? I sure didn't. And also, as another friend pointed out, "The e-mail doesn't say breast cancer. How come no one is asking the men to post their boxer colors in support of testicular cancer?"

It was this disingenuity that bothered me about the bra-color meme. If my girls want to post their bra color (or underwear color or tupperware color or booger color) because it makes them happy then by all means go for it! But call it what it is: coy titillation. It feels like trickery and disrespect to tell women to bare their undies as a way to help "spread the wings of cancer awareness." How does "raising awareness" without raising money help anyone?

Because these things never go quietly into the dark (Internet) night, this morning I received a follow-up:

Since some woman spilled the beans, we created a new one to keep men guessing :):) Here is the game. this will get the guys thinking....To' see if they've got dirty minds or not!! It's not at all rude. lol. This is about how you are wearing your hair right now. up- write ON TOP, down- write SIDE BY SIDE, messy- write EVERYWHERE AND MESSY! see if they get this one! remember tho ONLY SEND TO WOMEN. This is also for Cancer as we know how many lose their hair fighting :(:(

This new meme ups the ante by more explicitly referencing sex and adding not only the generic cancer admonition but also a "lost hair" addendum to tug on your emotions. Thankfully none of my girlfriends have fallen for this one.

So let me have it: Do I just have no sense of humor? Am I missing the point? Did you post your bra color? What do you think of campaigns that "raise awareness" and nothing else?

 

 

 

Follow Charlotte Hilton Andersen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CharlotteGFE

Comments

[GLHorton]

04:14 PM on 01/12/2010

There are epidemiological studies indicating that bras CAUSE breast cancer: populations that don't wear bras have a much lower incidence. So the "correct" answer for curing cancer would be "No color. I don't wear a bar and consequently expect my breasts to to be cancer-free."

[dianecurriesam]

03:39 PM on 01/12/2010

I thought the same thing when I was involved in this facebook craziness! Why did it say we were posting our bra colour 'for breast cancer'. In what way was it helping breast cancer? Why not just be completely honest and say "we are doing this for fun!" . BTW, nursing bras don't have to be boring, check out www.pumpease.com ... LOL!!!

[Michelle Honald]

05:00 PM on 01/12/2010

I had this debate with a friend on Facebook. Being a PR professor, though I did find it kind of silly, I saw value in what happened. The first thing we know is that getting people to change behavior is the most difficult type of campaign--you can raise awareness but actually getting people to take action is incredibly difficult. Second, studies tell us that if an issue, like breast cancer, is presented in too scary a manner, people will shut down and not take action so using something like humor in a more casual manner can be a good way to get people talking about something that might seem overwhelming to some. I agree with your friend who said that if even one person did a self-exam, or sought out more information or talked to a friend about concerns, then this was probably worth it. I think the one thing that most people who criticized it took issue with is that it was simply putting up a word, ostensibly to raise awareness but then led to nothing--there was no action to take. What I, as well as other friends on Facebook did, was use it as an opportunity to convert awareness to action. I donated money to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, encourage my friends to do the same and posted a link to make it easy for them. Imagine how powerful it would have been if that had been part of the original email.