Jeff

Why should healthyaddict & Nykytyne2 have all the fun with drinking shots. They should have a fundraising stipathon on blog TV, were for every milestone crossed in fund-raising, they remove an article of clothing. 🙂 (keeping within BlogTV decency standards, of course)
bigjohn756

What is this gorgeous girl worrying about? I, and many others, would gladly check her boobs for lumps on a daily basis. Then, she would not have to worry about her liver from drinking multiple shots.
Carlie

I hate the whole “save the boobs” campaign. It implies that the boobs are the important thing, rather than the women they’re attached to (and also that women who have already lost them have lost something very important, and that one of the worst things in the world that can happen to a woman is to lose them). I’ve pretty much stopped donating to breast cancer research because of that and the whole “pink ribbon for marketing slathered over everything” campaigns.
Mathew Wilder

But Carlie!

Without the pretty pink ribbon
You’d end up just like me
Without the pretty pink ribbon
You’d float down to the sea
Without the pretty pink ribbon
You’d say just what you pleased
Without the sticky little kitten
Your ticket could never be free

Without your tight little denim
Your virtues would all go unknown
Without the room that you live in
Your cancer would eat through the bone
Your muscles would bulge underground
Your demons would all be around

Without the pretty pink ribbon
You’d end up just like me
Without the pretty pink ribbon
You’d end up just like me
Without the pretty pink ribbon
You’d burn all these dying leaves

Without the pretty pink ribbon
You would lift this steaming herd
You would kill all the sick ones
You would bury them deep in the earth

Without the tight little denim
Your virtues would all go unknown
Without the room that you live in
Your cancer would eat through the bone
Your muscles would bulge underground
Your demons would all be around
Without the pretty pink ribbon
You’d end up just like me
Courtney

Carlie wrote:

It implies that the boobs are the important thing, rather than the women they’re attached to (and also that women who have already lost them have lost something very important, and that one of the worst things in the world that can happen to a woman is to lose them).

Carlie, thanks so much for saying this. I too am uncomfortable with the whole “saving of the disembodied parts without mention of the woman” tactic. And sorry to pick on you bigjohn756, but comments like yours are part of the reason why. We’re not saving the boobs because it means saving the woman, we’re doing it because keeping the boobs attached to the woman keeps her acceptable for appreciation and use by the male. Which is, of course, why women exist to begin with.

I know these folks’ hearts are in the right place, but honestly, these kind of campaigns and what they say about how we define what a woman is, strike me as gross.
Eliza

Hats off to Carlie for those comments.

I am totally in favor of people staying healthy and cancer-free for as long as possible, but I have a major beef with several things in this clip and with alot of how breast cancer (& breast cancer incidence, prevention, cure, & screening) are discussed in our society. OK, so it was meant to be funny yet support a good cause, but jeez did my skept-o-meter go off with several things in this clip.

(1) The fear-mongering “1 in 8” risk statement. The estimate is that 12% of women WOULD develop breast cancer ASSUMING they lived to age 90. But, they (we) won’t all live to age 90 – so, good news! The young lady in the clip probably has a lower risk than she thinks. (Of course, I don’t know her family history or other risk factors.)

(2) Drinking to “save boobs”. First, about a fund drive: someone should explain to me how the general public donating money is going to cure or prevent breast cancer, which is not one disease but a collection of different types of cancerous processes, NONE of which we currently are CLOSE to curing or preventing (I’m sorry to say). I, too, eschew the pink ribbon, Koman fundraising, etc.

Second, about shots: drinking alcohol is a short-sighted way to raise money for breast cancer prevention (I know, I know, it’s supposed to be funny). Limiting alcohol consumption is one of the FEW preventible/addressible measures which one can take to reduce her risk of breast cancer.

(3) I’d just like to say that if this lady is younger than 25 (I can’t tell any more), the best things she could do to reduce her risk of breast cancer would be to (1) get pregnant, (2) bear the child, and (3) breastfeed for a year or longer. Hmm, well, after a few shots, the first step might happen…

(4) Finally, I’d just like to point out that breast exams don’t prevent breast cancer (though the smaller a cancer is when detected and treated, the better the outcome – usually). Nor do mammograms. And that a recent study estimated that 1/3 cases of breast cancer detected by mammography (including “carcinoma-in-situ” or CIS, which isn’t cancer but is treated the same way – and is counted as breast cancer in the statistics) would never have even been diagnosed in future years if it hadn’t been found on mammogram (meaning, wouldn’t have been apparent, wouldn’t have been causing any health problems). (The estimate drops to 1/4 if CIS isn’t counted as cancer. But it is.)

Here’s the abstract for the study estimating “overdiagnosis”. Of course, we have no clue WHICH cancers and carcinomas-in-situ found by mammogram would go on to become risks to health and life, and which 1/3 would not, so I have no quibble with going ahead & treating all diagnosed cases. But I just think people should be aware of how NOT black-and-white it is, and how NOT all women, nor 1/8 women, are going to get breast cancer or die of breast cancer.
Eliza

Small clarification, for anyone thinking of trying the under-25 approach for risk reduction I mentioned. I should have presented it as a two-step (not 3-step) process, since simply getting pregnant doesn’t reduce the risk of breast cancer:
(1) get pregnant and carry the child to term
(2) breastfeed for a year or longer.

Sorry for any misunderstanding. Plan B is available at most pharmacies, for those who may have started working on the pregnancy part before I clarified the “to term” part.
Frik

I too agree with Carlie; women are more than just their breasts. Moreover, what upsets me the most is that Ashley Paramore almost reduced breast cancer to a joke. In all honesty, she is not a good actor, and looked like she was going to burst out laughing at any moment. This trivializes breast cancer and the women suffering from the condition. We owe it to women to have better attitudes about breast cancer than does this sexist YouTube video.
Jerad

While I agree with the previous posters that have said this is not the way to go about it I disagree that the pink ribbon campaign and the koman foundation are bad things. Even if personal contributions are a minuscule speck of what’s contributed overall I’m sure the displays of public interest are of help in getting more funding in other places.
MikeTheInfidel

The problem with the pink ribbon campaign is that the money goes mostly towards producing more pink ribbons, promotion, marketing, etc. That’s my major beef with it. Only a tiny percentage actually goes toward research. Much better to just donate directly to a research group.
ATL-Apostate

Um, I thought it was funny.

And I agree with some of the other posts here. Boobs are quite pointless unless they are attached to a woman. Detached boobs are not nearly as appealing. You can’t feed a baby with a detached boob. What’s more, womanless boobs don’t bounce. A womanless boob would likely just lie there, staring at you like some kind of cyclops. Not much fun if you ask me. Yep, I definitely prefer to have the woman, not just the boob. But that’s just my preference.

/tongue in cheek
Philosos AKA Hector

Although I agree that it certainly seems bad about “boobs” being front and center (no puns intended) one of the issues with breast cancer is that women (from what I’ve observed in literature, and from family members)DO feel somewhat less whole because of the loss of a breast so it’s not only about what men like but it’s about how women FEEL about their bodies.
Carlie

Philosos, I agree with you about how they feel – I don’t mean to minimize the pain and loss those women go through. But part of that feeling of loss comes from the way society has emphasized breasts as being integral to womanhood. An analogy would be that losing one’s hair to chemo would be more upsetting if every woman was expected to have waist-length hair to be a proper woman, perhaps less upsetting if short spiky hairstyles were a common and accepted way to be feminine.
If the breast cancer advocacy is “save the boobs”, then if you’ve lost them, you’ve failed, even if you’re now cancer-free. That’s an extra burden no one should have to have, especially if they were already feeling badly about losing them in the first place.

error: Content is protected !!