As I’m sure all of you Facebook users noticed over the past couple days, a silly bra-color-themed status wildfire ignited annoyances all over the internet. Being more curmudgeonly than usual, this got on my nerves to no end. “Why,” you ask?
Because it started as a chain letter and had a label slapped onto it when people questioned the motives. The men may not be particularly aware of it, since it was a “women only” thing, but it got started by way of mass Facebook messages like the following:
We’re playing a little game where every woman on Facebook will type the colour of the bra she is wearing today, (on your status) just the actual colour, nothing else. Forward this to women ONLY and let’s see if the men can work out what our game is.
How delightfully devious and titillating! Except that it’s stupid. And I received this same message multiple times from multiple sets of friends for multiple days. Take my pregnancy hormones and multiply them by that, and it turned into me getting yelled at by people who took it seriously because I voiced how lame and pointless I thought it was.
“Why? It’s a breast cancer awareness thing.” Is it? Because it doesn’t seem to actually have any affiliation at all. First of all, the mention of breast cancer awareness was not offered until the second day of messaging/posting. Secondly, nobody knows who started it or where, and nobody is taking credit. If you came up with a “brilliant” networking plan wouldn’t you want to say “hey, that was me”? Nobody is that big of an altruist.
Tracy said exactly what I’m trying to get at when I linked to this article (which I got from Heidi Anderson) on my profile, so I’ll let her do the talking: [emphases mine]
Tracy King With no link, website, campaign etc to back it up then it is pointless, but that is, as Elyse points out, because it wasn’t originally anything to do with breast cancer at all, it was a chain letter. Which raises questions:
1) How and why did it become associated with breast cancer? Chain letters are older than the hills, and often have a pretend altruistic cause attached in order to spread. Is this a case of the same thing?
2) How was this meant to help raise awareness of breast cancer? Are there any Facebook users anywhere in the world who aren’t aware that you can get cancer in your breasts? Assuming that the objective wasn’t just a chain letter, but a genuine attempt to do *something* for breast cancer, then what’s the *something*?3) Where are the campaign spokespersons? If this was a genuine awareness campaign then those behind would/should have come forward by now to say “and here’s what we are getting at: breast cancer research needs money, go get screened, etc” or whatever the objective is.
In her first point she mentions how chain letters often have altruistic causes attached to them to help spread the letter further. Snopes has this to say about chain letters, including those with altruistic messages. In this case, the altruism approach wasn’t even to raise money – it was to cover up the stupidity of the action. Basically this started happening:
Sally: But… what about breast cancer?
Far be it for me to ruin your idea of a good time, but if I say something about it, don’t throw a cause in my face when that wasn’t the original intention of the action. Now, the reverse effect isn’t possible… you can’t become UNaware of breast cancer. So had this actually been the initial intention of the activity, they would have had success. Whomever it was that labeled it as such might as well take the credit, because they got what they wanted: an excuse to annoy the piss out of everyone AND get attention.
Yes, breast cancer awareness is important. Yes, I would like to aid in spreading the word about regular breast self-exams, as well as exams performed by your doctor. No, posting your bra color and not telling anyone WHY is not a constructive means by which to spread a positive message. It would do more good to randomly ask, “Hey ladies, have you felt yourself up yet this month?”
In fact, have you felt yourself up yet? No? Go do that now. I’ll wait here.
In the meanwhile, here’s a picture of some boobies:
Back? All squared away? Good. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to be aware of the look and feel of your boobs. And seriously, it’s an excuse to grab those lovely bits up front and remind yourself of what all the fuss is about. Boobs are awesome!
The moral of the story: chain letters are stupid and make me yell at people. Also, 
be aware of and friends with your boobs. Any woman who’s ever had breast cancer, known someone with breast cancer or had a breast cancer scare can tell you how earth shatteringly devastating that news is. Please please please grope yourself and, if you find a problem, make an appointment immediately for a screening. Whether you check yourself or not, see your doctor regularly for an exam. It makes a huge difference.
Anyone who’s interested in donating to Breast Cancer Awareness, here’s a link to a Facebook group supporting multiple donation sites. Please go visit them and help make a difference. I’ll thank you for that kind of awareness raising!
Idea: New meme. All the Skepchicks and Skepchick readers post on Twitter and Facebook: “I’m groping my breasts to check for breast cancer. #breastcancerawareness”
*does it*
I’ll just leave this here in case anyone decides to take up the idea.
“Jim, your father was in possession of this message for five minutes. He forwarded it to eight hundred people, including yourself. I dare you to do better.” -Captain Christopher Pike
Thank you! I have gotten into so many arguements over the last few days about how this meme doesn’t do a damned thing for breast cancer awareness. To me it’s the equivalent of saying you’ll pray for someone who is sick. It’s a way of feeling like you are doing something when you can’t/don’t want to do anything actually helpful.
Sally: But… what about breast cancer?
…too often strikes me as a variation on “But what about the children?”
And I get into arguments about this too. Apparently I should just accept that it’s a good thing to raise awareness, no matter how or where or why.
@Elles the Vampire Slayer: I did it! :D
@Advocatus Diaboli: @ZenMonkey: It’s exactly like that. If I don’t donate $1 at the register to Children of America, I feel like a jerk. But I wouldn’t feel like a jerk if someone said “Hey, you should say you like Children of America in support of their cause,” and I said that seemed like a stupid way to support them.
Hey guys! Check your prostate now! And then smell your finger and describe it in your facebook status! All those silly girls will have no idea what we’re talking about and will sit in their offices all day totally turned on. I’m deadly serious, it’s in aid of prostate cancer awareness. Do it. Do it now.
I remember hearing once (many years ago from… who knows?) – anyway, I heard that sometimes a woman’s significant other will actually be the first to feel or see a lump in her breast. I found that kind of creepy to be honest.
I mean, I want my husband to touch my boobies, but I’d like to know how they look and feel AT LEAST as well as he does.
So, ladies, feel yourselves up and check yourselves in the mirror. Men, too! Prostate cancer is no joke!
@skepto bismol: HAHA ewww!
@“Other†Amanda: That just reminded me of one of the opening scenes for Gummo, in which a guy and a girl are making out and he stops to tell her “you got a big ol’ lump in your titty.” I agree – I would like to think that I would notice such a thing in my own body before my husband did. Not that I wouldn’t be eternally grateful if he found something and it was early enough to treat.
See, I got a different message the first time I got it. The message I got said basically take off your bra, post the color, give yourself a self exam (and it gave instructions for the proper way to give yourself one). It was supposed to remind you to do a self exam.
When I got the message a few days later from another friend, the self exam part of was missing from the message, then it just turned into a stupid game.
@Jane Grey: And that’s what drives me nuts about this whole thing… there were a few versions! I wish I had gotten that form of it – maybe I wouldn’t end up seething every time I get a new message in my inbox (which is still happening, by the way, because people are now having conversations by hitting “Reply All” and there’s no way to remove yourself from the list).
Not even all of them were about boobs! Some were about the color of your underwear and some were the age you lost your virgnity. With all 3 of those going around at the same time and the one with the awareness link embedded in it not making as many rounds, it makes it difficult to believe that that was still the original intention.
And who was the asshole on Twitter telling everyone to post a flavor to raise ice cream awareness for people with hypoicecreamia?
Oh and also, I thought routine self-exams were no longer recommended.
I had to have a dude explain this to me anyway. Fail.
I won’t be participating unless I see it get people into donating money to those affected by breast cancer and go bankrupt paying for treatment because of inadequate or no health insurance.
@Elyse: I went right out and got HagenDaazs chocolate peanut butter ice cream to prevent hypoicecreamia.
I think the thing with self exams is a question of efficacy when you don’t do them in conjunction with routine doctor visits. Surely it can’t be a bad thing to handle your boobs, right? I just wouldn’t rely on only yourself to notice changes.
YAH INORITE?
I went on to like, facebook, and I saw someone post just “white” as her status and I was like SO pissed when she did that and I tried to forget about it by looking at someone else’s status and it just said “black” and I was just so damn angry you know? It was just the final straw and so now I’m really really angry at all these people posting colours on their facebook. Really, there is nothing in the world right now that annoys me more than that, not anything. God I am so pissed.
@Halla Basin: LIKE TOTALLY!
I’m sorry you missed the part of my post where I was trying to put a positive spin on it, like discussing actual breast cancer awareness. Play along next time, though, and maybe you’ll get it right! :)
I wish I knew who wrote this but it is my reply to all chain letters I receive:
The Mother Of All Chain Letters
Hello, my name is _____________ and I suffer from the guilt of not forwarding 50 billion fucking chain letters sent to me by people who actually believe that if you send them on, a poor 6-year-old girl in Arkansas with a breast on her forehead will be able to raise enough money to have it removed before her redneck parents sell her to a traveling freak show. Do you honestly believe that Bill Gates is going to give you, and everyone to whom you send “his” email, $1000? How stupid are we? “Ooooh, looky here! If I scroll down this page and make a wish, I’ll get laid by every good looking model in the magazine!” What a bunch of horseshit. Basically, this message is a big @!#$ YOU to all the people out there who have nothing better to do than to send me stupid chain mail forwards. Maybe the evil chain letter leprechauns will come into my house and sodomize me in my sleep for not continuing a chain that was started by Peter in 5 AD and brought to this country by midget pilgrims on the Mayflower. @!#$ them. If you’re going to forward something, at least send me something mildly amusing. I’ve seen all the “send this to 10 of your closest friends, and this poor, wretched excuse for a human being will somehow receive a nickel from some omniscient being” forwards about 90 times. I don’t fucking care. Show a little intelligence and think about what you’re actually contributing to by sending out these forwards. Chances are, it’s your own unpopularity. The point being? If you get some chain letter that’s threatening to leave you shagless or luckless for the rest of your life, delete it. If it’s funny, send it on. Don’t piss people off by making them feel guilty about a leper in Botswana with no teeth who has been tied to a dead elephant for 27 years and whose only salvation is the 5 cents per letter he’ll receive if you forward this email. Now forward this to everyone you know. Otherwise, tomorrow morning your underwear will turn carnivorous and will consume your genitals.
Author Unknown
@Tressa: This is excellent and, if I may, will be sent to whomever sends me some BS next. :D
@Halla Basin: Um…way to miss the point. Chill out.
Thank you for posting this, Chelsea! It’s was right up my angry, ranty alley.
I wish I’d been that articulate when I told people in my friend’s list to stop sending chain-letter spam and posted a links to NBCF and the Susan G. Komen site if they were “actually interested in doing something useful,” about awareness.
Perhaps it served a convoluted version of it’s purpose by getting me to think about breast cancer awareness and attempting to spread that concern with information about actually doing something. Many of my “friends” seemed more concerned about jumping on a popular bandwagon than the supposed intent of the wagon itself.
It can be frustrating to hear/read people defending this particular chain-letter, when criticized, because it “worked” in getting people to think about breast cancer. However, I have very strong doubts about that actually being the brilliant plan all along.
That being said, it has garnered quite a bit of publicity in places blogs like Skepchick, and other news-related sites like NPR, and The Washington Post. As much as it grates on my chain-letter hating, curmudgeonly views of hot new Facebook trends that need to get off my lawn, this one got people really talking about it.
Edit: Sorry to double-post!
@Elyse:
It seems that the lines between the wording of phrases like “routine self-exams were no longer recommended” and ” Doctors are no longer recommending (routine self-exams)” were blurred by bad media coverage. Some info on this from Medscape here (I’m not familiar with the medical community, and thus not familiar with the credibility of Medscape, but they seem promising, so far).
As Chelsea had mentioned, I think being familiar with the different, normal things that go on with your breast tissue on a regular basis is healthy so long as you’re attempting to take an educated approach to the wonderful world that is your boobies : )
Purple.
Wait, wrong site and gender. Sorry.
I think the whole thing is funny, but I probably have a perversely young sense of humor. I did it, and so did a lot of my friends. We also talked about self-exam, which is still recommended, by the way. Routine mammograms before the age of 50 – not anymore. We also talked about real ways to help prevent breast cancer, like breast feeding. I heard from a couple of women that it felt like a solidarity thing. I also found out that a friend had had a recent breast cancer scare.
So yeah, in and of itself, bra color didn’t do anything. But it got the ball rolling, and I think it was worth whatever annoyance it caused others.
The craze seems to be over, at least in Facebook. Even my wife got into it. And after she told me what it was about, I “outed” the project in a comment.
Ready to shoot me now, ladies?
It seems to have sparked a lot of discussion in posts like this one and many many others. Some talking about the whole Pink Phenom, some talking about the titillation factor, some talking about other cancers being not as sexy and not getting found as soon (colorectal being high on this list) and other things.
But really this whole thing just turned me into a sobbing mess because the day after I found out my aunt has breast cancer a bunch of girls on my facebook were posting things like teehee black, hahaha nothing!!, omg it’s purple lacey. I refrained from saying anything because I knew everything I’d have to say would be emotion laden and just piss people off.
@Amoebic: Right. In an accidental way it got people talking, but only once the “purpose” (which I still don’t buy) was outed for discussion. And even then people reacted with more of a “oh…” than “yes! Let’s do something about it!” Blargh!!
@loudlyquiet: I am so sorry to hear about your aunt’s news. The way this stupid game effected you is one of the things I was worried about. Giggling over something as sensitive as this and trying to make it sexy does nothing but make it seem like a laughing matter, which it very much is not. *hugs* to you and your aunt.
Curmudgeonly? You bet. But absolutely right on the money. Mind you, it was amusing – for a while. I even got taken in, and tried to warn a friend in India that her FB account may have been hacked when the word ‘NUDE’ appeared on her status message. We had a LOL session over it – at my expense, of course.
But this idea per se is essentially ridiculous. Did it really promote any breast cancer awareness? After the hullabaloo about posting bra colors dies down, what next? Post cup sizes? Perhaps we men should start posting underwear colors to draw attention to the problem of testicular cancer?
Loved the final bit of admonition in your post.
I know this is my first time posting, but apparently, it’s inches now. It took some digging but it seems like it’s post your shoe size followed by inches and a frown. This whole thing is just stupid.
If even one person found a lump during the course of all this, it must have been worth it.
Complaining that something more constructive should have been done makes me think that the complainers should have to do something constructive too.
As I’m bordering on complaining – in order to not get sucked into a self referential loop – I’ve just made a donation.
Looking back, as my donation was (indirectly) as a result of the campaign, it was still worth it, in a small way.
Going commando
@William Satire:
I think many of us did do something for the same reason. Thank you for donating : )
@William Satire:
One lump (that likely would have been found anyway) and a donation are great, but you’re sort of forgetting the utter insensitive assholiness of teasing the boys by making them think about bras and boobies to raise awareness for a bunch of women who just lost their breasts. You actually survived breast cancer? Sorry, you can’t participate, this is for the sexy girls who still have hot tatas!
And don’t forget all the pro-colorposting messages that essentially say to those pateints, “Quit bitching about how this isn’t doing any good but totally rubs it into the faces of the suffering cancer patients. It’s fun, okay? Why don’t you go get some chemo or something and stop harshing facebook’s hilarious titillation! Get it? Like tits? Hahahaha I’m going to change my bra again so I can keep playing. This is the greatest! So seriously, stop complaining. This is for you okay? Be grateful! Just try and get over that weird sense of having totally lost your femininity because you no longer have boobs and just be happy for those of us who still have them to flaunt. After all, the boys won’t be sitting around with hard-ons if they’re not thinking about our boobs… then you’re going to die of cancer. How does that feel? Yeah. So shut up. Red lace push up with adorable crystal butterflies on the straps!”
It’s almost like people are still… oh, what’s the word?… completely unaware of the plight of the breast cancer patient.
I have to confess to being a bit dim and getting taken in by it. I had loads of status updates from friends that were just random colours. Then someone a bit futher up the chain said, “I hear we’re just saying the colour of our pants.” (ie: the british meaning of the word).
Being a naturally insecure idiot with very few friends I thought I’d be “in” with the group and posted the colour black, only to then be bombarded with tons of responses saying what an idiot I am. Which is true, I suppose.
The thing is, in amongst all the patronising responses to my post, not one person said it was “bra colours”.
There was a rather cruel British playground game in the 70s wher kids would go round other kids holding out a clenched fist and saying, “smell my cheese”. A gullible child, not in on the joke, would smell the fist and get promptly smacked in the face. Ha, ha. This reminded me of that, but then I’m one of the stupid numpties who got sucked in by it, so fair enough, the joke’s on me.
(I’m a bloke, by the way.)