Pop-Culture | Posted by Nellie B on 01/19/2010
Burn Your Bra Color Status Updates
I was wondering why, starting on about Thursday, my Facebook friends were posting words like “black,” “hot pink,” and “beige” as their statuses. Then I got the mass message: “Cancer awareness: Write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this 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.”
I started to sneak a peek under my own shirt, but then the radical feminist analysis of the message ran through my head. Let’s break this message down.
1. Write just the color, nothing else. Okay, I’m sure that anyone with even a smidge of Internet savvy can type “why is everyone posting colors as their statuses?” into a search engine.
2. Send this on to ONLY girls, no men. Girls versus men–hmm, let’s look at this dichotomy. Of course, bras and such fripperies are hopelessly girlie secrets that men can only ogle. You know, secret ladies’ business, the reason we love being girls, blah blah blah femininity b.s. One can just hear the chorus of tittering voices talking about things that men will never understand, you know, because they’re so macho and insensitive. And, of course, we’re assuming that only girls wear bras, and all girls wear bras. But then, a viral campaign based on lite exhibitionism for the virtual male gaze isn’t really going to take the complexities of gender into account.
3. 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. Again with the girls and men. Do I want my adult male acquaintances to ponder what I’m wearing on my underage chest? The whole campaign reeks of voyeurism and the American obsession with breasts.
breast cancer awareness or trend?
I understand that at least in its inception, the message was meant to raise breast cancer awareness. As the granddaughter, friend and cousin of breast cancer survivors, I understand the dire need for awareness of breast health. Yet the bra color campaign smacks of initiatives like “Save the Ta-Tas,” which advocate ending breast cancer on the basis of “boobies are sexy and hilarious” rather than “women’s lives are at stake.” Sadly, sexy “awareness” campaigns are the most popular and successful–even the sluggish, fusty Washington Post picked up on the bra trend in a Saturday Style piece. One needs only to check out your friends’ current status messages to see how “aware” they are, and how successful the campaign was.
More than anything, this campaign encourages snickering soft-core femininity, not awareness of the severity of cancer. We’ve gone from throwing bras in a Freedom Trash Can at the Miss America pageant in 1968 (the place where that pesky bra-burner rumor got started) to virtually informing the world about our own.
How about some real awareness: according to the American Cancer Society, 40,000 women die from breast cancer annually. Carcinogen levels in our air and water are strongly correlated with causing cancer. All women have a one in eight lifetime risk for breast cancer.
Put that in your status message.
(18 votes, average: 4.56 out of 5)
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Arran @ at 3:50 pm, January 19th, 2010
Somehow I managed to figure out why all my female friends had colours as their status updates (I think the “pink polka dots” was a big tip off) but the same thoughts ran through my head really; where’s the ‘awareness’ that this is supposed to be promoting?
Before the end of the day, I posted a link to some information about breast cancer statistics & some friends were like “OMG, who told you/how did you know” & I just said “I thought everybody knew this”
Steph @ at 4:13 pm, January 19th, 2010
This is very eloquently put – I’d been struggling to put how I felt about this whole thing into words, and you did a magnificent job.
Lucy @ at 5:03 pm, January 19th, 2010
Yah. The Broadsheet and Jezebel articles kind of tipped cold water all over my fire. But Feminazery’s title? I still find to be high-larious…
http://jezebel.com/5444444/thanks-for-sharing-but-your-bra-color-isnt-going-to-cure-cancer
http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/index.html
http://dmhatingfemisfromhell.blogspot.com/2010/01/im-wearing-silky-leopard-print-pushup.html
I don’t find this silly spate of bra-colour postings to be particularly worrying or offensive: though, yeah, as your post points out, it can be construed as reflective of some other, none-too-savoury traits and attitudes towards women in culture.
However, I WOULD say that, as your post mentions towards the end, this meme is really reflective of a worrying new trend of ’slactivism’, towards worthy causes, such as breast cancer awareness; or, more recently, towards the aid and charity efforts in Haiti. A lot of this also is being increasingly propagated not just over email, but on these social networking sites and online forums too, as our lives make the greater ’shift’ to the digital – now, when was the last time that you actually visited a charity’s actual store, or website, and then actually donated to them? I know I’m guilty.
And How much easier it is to simply post a bra colour in your facebook sttus, or join some group declaring yourself to be ‘in support of the Haiti Earthquake Appeal’ even one which doesn’t pledge to donate money, than make an actual donation and stick to it.
Condemnation of all of these people’s charitable instincts, when many of whom are underage and don’t have credit cards to make donations with or the ability to ‘Giftaid’ it, of course ain’t the answer – but then, neither is slactivism. Breast exams can really help save lives: try here:
http://www.womens-health.co.uk/breast_exam.html
for how. Or text HAITI to 90999, to give $10 in the US… I wish we had something like this effort in the UK.
chelsea @ at 5:09 pm, January 19th, 2010
I got that stupid message too, and basically had the same reaction. I was like “This is ‘femininity’ at it’s worst.”
Rory @ at 5:55 pm, January 19th, 2010
I’m posting those stats as my status
Faris @ at 6:17 pm, January 19th, 2010
Somehow, by the time it got to me, the whole “cancer” part had been lost. It was just a game by then.
paranoidasteroid @ at 6:53 pm, January 19th, 2010
I read an article about this (I think it might have been on Slate?), and the term they used was “Slacktivism.” As in, something that takes almost no effort but makes you feel like you’re spreading awareness. Most of the people who posted their bra color didn’t know anything about breast cancer.
selects @ at 2:39 am, January 21st, 2010
that obsession with breasts isn’t just an american thing, you know
O'Phylia @ at 8:40 pm, January 21st, 2010
Another bit of awareness that will just set people aback:
Men get breast cancer too.
Cara @ at 11:17 pm, January 28th, 2010
Thank you! I was so outraged by this stupid fad that I also blogged about it recently. I was mostly furious at how little it actually did for breast cancer but you rased some excellent points that I didn’t think of at the time but now agree with totally. Fantastic article!
Claire @ at 12:01 pm, February 11th, 2010
Who even cares about the color of your bra? And how is that going to help raise awareness about breast cancer if all it is is women checking to see the color of their bra?
Rashad Locklin @ at 1:03 pm, May 20th, 2010
I found this post while surfing the net some random stuff. Thanks for sharing will be sure to follow this blog regularly and will email this post to my friends.
Grey @ at 4:46 pm, July 5th, 2010
At first I seriously wondered if anybody actually fell for it and posted it on their Facebook. Apparently they did.