Tuesday was No Bra Day, which would normally be my favorite public holiday. An excuse to ditch the confinement of underwire? Sign me up.
Except the "holiday" was started under the guise of "breast cancer awareness."
Now, because this may sound like I don’t support breast cancer awareness, let me be the first to say I do. My maternal grandmother died from breast cancer, and I fully believe there needs to be a focus on screening efforts and finding a cure.
I just don’t agree with how we’re doing it. Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is held in the month of October, is currently too sexualized to be as beneficial as it needs to be.
Take No Bra Day as an example. The post on the Awareness Days website is mostly just describing breasts, devoid of any real point. Seriously, it uses the term "boobies" three times and encourages women to wear a white shirt and take pictures of themselves.
The only reference to breast cancer is one sentence at the very end: "Breast Cancer is something you should take seriously and be checked for."
But it’s hard to take breast cancer seriously when all the awareness campaigns do is trivialize and sexualize what should be understood as a horrific illness.
Is a day clearly engineered so men can ogle nipples really the best way to raise awareness for a deadly disease?
On that same note, is buying an "I <3 boobies" wristband for $15 — with only a portion going to fund research — the best way to find a cure?
Probably not, when you could be donating $15 directly to research instead.
We don’t sexualize other diseases like we do breast cancer. No one makes bracelets that say "I <3 the male G-spot" for prostate cancer.
It comes down to our cultural preoccupation with breasts.
We fetishize breast cancer because we think breasts are sexy.
It’s disconcerting.
A friend of mine recently pointed out this sad fact: Saving women’s lives is dependent on the perceived sex appeal of breasts.
Because really, you don’t "heart" all boobies. It’s not cool or popular to love the breasts of a 68-year-old grandmother. We only care about the breasts we deem worth saving — round, perky and sexually appealing.
It’s a shame our society cares more about the perfect, double-D chest of a young woman than her life or her and her family's feelings.
It’s a shame we put more effort in saving these breasts than we do finding ways to fund mammograms and mastectomies.
When we put the entire focus of breast cancer on breasts, we do a few problematic things. For one, we make it seem as if the only reason breast cancer is a bad thing is because women lose their sexuality and their sex appeal. We also make it seem as if breast cancer only affects women.
It can be argued that all these things — the "I <3 Boobies" wristbands, "save the ta-tas" T-shirts, No Bra Day — are productive in that they raise awareness. But at some point, we have to do more than raise awareness.
Awareness means nothing if we don’t work toward a solution.
Posting braless selfies for No Bra Day does not help find a cure. It does not increase access to low-cost breast cancer screening. It does not support survivors. It does not help the families who lost loved ones.
Breast cancer is a deadly disease. It is not sexy. We don’t need to save the "ta-tas." We need to save lives.
Robyn Smith is a UF journalism senior. Her column appears on Fridays.
