Welcome to Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Would you like pink ribbon yogurt?
Would you like a pink ribbon coffee mug from Starbucks?
Would you like any product, any product at all with a pink ribbon
from any major company in America, because chances are, they have something?
Recently a friend posted something on the sexualization of
breast cancer awareness with campaigns like “Save Second Base.”
As a woman who had a double mastectomy in her thirties,
single, and who today commemorates the birthday of her breast cancer buddy, who
was not so fortunate as to live, I have a very unique perspective on this.
Breast cancer is not pretty, and it is not pink, and having
lost my hair, my breasts, and just about everything else which defines me as
female, I hate the Barbie-ification of breast cancer awareness.
And while I agree that it is important that people are aware
of breast cancer, I have to be honest, I just don’t think it warrants the
publicity it receives. I think hunger in America is a more important cause to
be shown on cereal boxes in the grocery store than pink ribbons.
But here is why I really hate all of it.
It reminds me, constantly, of things I don’t want to think
about.
It reminds me of my friend who did not make it.
It reminds me that my body is now deformed.
It reminds me that I lost about a year to chemotherapy
treatments, radiation treatments and surgery recovery.
And as I sit here, flushed, drenched in sweat, mildly nauseous
from the ongoing treatment, fundamentally feeling and, truth be said, believing
I am less attractive for the experience, I am outraged by the concept of “Save
the Tatas.”
There is a shirt out there that says, “Of course they are
fake, my real ones tried to kill me.” My real ones tried to kill me. Why should
I try to save them?
I think the concept behind “Save the Tatas” is fundamentally
flawed. Who the fuck cares about the tatas. Save the PERSON.
But no, in our culture, it is not the person…. It is the
tatas.
So I guess that is all we, breast cancer patients, are at
the end of the Barbification of breast cancer.
Just some tatas for saving.
And my tatas… they weren't saved.
In loving memory of Mananya Tantiwiwat who would have made the world a better place had she lived to today, her 31st birthday.
Stupid: Cancer.
Cool: Still alive to write this post. (Fuck Cancer.)
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This post has been up less than 12 hours and has gotten a
bit of backlash. So let me say this a different way. My problem with the breast
cancer donation industry (because that is what it is, an industry) is its
emphasis. Breast cancer is NOT about breasts. It is about cancer.
