Why breasts on show miss the point of breast cancer campaigns

Another October, another breast cancer awareness month. Besides the ubiquitous pink ribbons and charity goodies on sale everywhere, I could not help but notice the number of bare breasts that started appearing everywhere in the name of cancer awareness.

Last month Britain's Got Talent judge Amanda Holden stripped down to a pair of leopard print knickers and was photographed with only a pair of silver stilettos to cover her modesty. The London Evening Standard reported this was part of a charity campaign to raise funds for research into women's health issues.

This week some women on the social networking site Twitter started uploading photos of their cleavages, while tweeting the hashtags #BreastCancerAwareness and #BCAwareness to turn them into trending topics.

While a handful of good-humoured twitterers opted for publishing images of two watermelons, fried eggs, or man boobs, a few ladies replaced their normal avatars with images of their exposed bosoms – to the delight of the male Twitterati.

Below are some of the avatars available on the site as of today. Happy viewing:

Interestingly, all breasts on display were perfect, healthy-looking ones. Not a single mastectomised boob.

Put 'em away, love

It always floors me how women with no experience of breast cancer can think that exposing their bosoms in public can in any way promote awareness for a serious disease, which affects one in nine women in the UK.

The majority of women diagnosed with breast cancer will undergo surgery, either a lumpectomoy, removing the cancerous lump, with some of the healthy cells around it, or a mastectomy, in which they will lose one or both breasts.

Breast reconstruction is possible post-mastectomy, but as I mentioned in a previous blog, it is not a straightforward process, involving skin grafts and separate operations for adding nipples. And despite advances in plastic surgery, they will never look the same as real breasts.

As the mutilation affects one of the female body parts most closely associated with sexuality and femininity, losing part of a breast, a full one, or both breasts can have long-term devastating psychological effects on the patient.

I speak from experience – I am a breast cancer survivor myself. Although I only needed minimal surgery for an early stage cancer, my relationship with my body has never been the same since.

The gratuitous breast exposure samples on Twitter infuriated me because they do not take into consideration the feeling of those women who have lost their breasts, or whose breasts were deformed due to breast cancer treatment. It is not my business what part of her body a woman decides to expose on the Internet, but if their aim is to help breast cancer patients, I would borrow the words of a gay friend and say:

"Darling, put those tits away."

Publicity ...for whom?

Making one's avatar into one of a beautiful cleavage may excite men and raise...erm...alertness of a certain type, but it does zilch towards helping the cause of preventing breast cancer, nor of improving treatment and the patients' chances of survival.

At the risk of causing offence, I will go as far as to say it is a meaningless narcissistic act, which demeans the plight of breast cancer patients and trivialises the importance of a serious health issue.

If anyone thinks I am being extreme, I would invite them to go visit the breast care unit of a hospital and ask to be shown a mastectomised chest, speak to patients undergoing treatment whose hair, eyebrows and eyelashes have fallen out due to chemotherapy, patients experiencing acute menopause symptoms because they are on Tamoxifen. I challenge them to go round the ward in a low-cut top, flaunting perfect cleavage, when these women's are being butchered.

Breast cancer does need as much publicity as possible. The more aware women become, the sooner the cancer is diagnosed, the less radical the treatment will be, the higher the chances of survival. Taking one's kit off, especially in the case of celebrities, may help fill the fundraising kit-ty faster. But it must always be done with care and sensitivity, and never be used in a self-serving manner.

If you want to genuinely help fight breast cancer you can:

a) start a campaign yourself

b) help promote self-examination in women

c) make a donation to a breast cancer charity

d) participate in a fundraising event

e) volunteer your time to a charity

Below are some breast cancer charities in the UK worth supporting (click on links to find out more). I am personally hugely indebted to Breast Cancer Haven, so I have listed them first. Please feel free to leave me comments with further suggestions, and I will add them to the list

• Breast Cancer Haven
• Breakthrough Breast Cancer
• Breast Cancer Care
• Breast Cancer Campaign
• Walk the Walk
• Pink Ribbon Foundation
• Cancer Research UK
• Macmillan Cancer Support

Why Facebook's boob is larger than Sharon's

The news about Facebook removing the post-mastectomy photos of 45-year old breast cancer patient Sharon Adams allegedly due to its "sexual content" and "nudity", brings me to my favourite topic: boobs and why the world is so obsessed by them.

This is not the first time, and it won't be the last, the sight of a woman's bare breasts causes public outcry when the last thing she had in mind was to use them as a sexual weapon, to provoke or to shock.

No breastfeeding please, we are British
Women being cautioned or expelled for whipping their boobs out in public places for no other reason than to feed their babies, seems to be a common occurrence in this country. Below are some clippings from the British press:


Woman asked to stop breastfeeding her baby at Job Centre

Woman thrown out of Job Centre for feeding baby

Woman told to stop breastfeeding in a leisure centre because "there are children present"...

One Birmingham mother found the constant disapproving stares so disturbing that she went on to invent a product called Mamascarf, which can be tied around the feeding mother's neck thus shielding both baby and boobs from intrusive eyes.

For a nation of men and women who are obsessed with breasts, it is ironic that their sight in the context of baby feeding can cause such controversy.

Breastfest
Breast images seem to bombard our daily lives whether we want it or not. All one has to do is to step out into the street, especially now that the weather is getting warmer, to see ladies of all ages sashaying in tops and dresses that hardly cover their modesty. Women wear them with pride, knowing men are going to stare. For those ladies craving attention, it is a tried-and-tested attention-grabber – if you don't mind men having conversations with your breasts, that is.

Women say high heels give them confidence; it makes them "stand tall" both literally and figuratively. But breast exposure can be used even more effectively as a confidence booster. Often women addicted to breast augmentation surgery turn out to suffer from very poor self-esteem. They confuse their need for love, self-love, with a need for larger breasts.

An example that comes to mind is that of Sheyla Hershey, a Brazilian woman who has the record of the largest breasts in the world at a 38KKK bust. She has had a total of 18 plastic surgeries done, mostly to her breasts. She wants to be even larger, and her surgeon will not refuse her further augmentations, even though, with one gallon of silicon implanted, her life is already at risk. "I just want to be happy," she pleaded, as she wept to the reporter interviewing her. "No one will stop me from being happy."


Extreme cases aside, sights and photos of breasts abound in real life as well as in page 3s and glossy magazines. In Britain, as in many other Western countries, flaunting one's "assets" is generally accepted and seen as positive. The celebrity culture only seems to underline this perception. No reader seems to consider offensive a photo of singer Jordan (Katie Price) with her "silicon valley" spilling out of her dress splashed across the front page of a tabloid. In fact, papparazzi are paid handsomely to take photos of glamorous topless celebs on the beach or private yachts, or wearing bikinis of the type Brazilians appropriately call "fio dental" – or dental floss.

It takes one quick browse of a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace for one to find that a large number of ladies post profile photos of themselves taken from such an angle that it gives ample view of their breasts. I have been on any Internet dating site before and was amused to discover that the de rigueur ID photo for women is one that makes your potential suitor feel like they are naughtily looking down your bosom. It makes you wonder if men are even interested at all in anything above the bra line.

And yet, these are considered, normal, natural, completely healthy behaviours by both sexes...

Double Standards
Facebook has now allegedly apologised to Sharon Adams for having censored her mastectomy pictures. A group called GET SHARON ADAMS PICTURE BACK ON FACEBOOK FOR BREAST CANCER has now been formed to protest against the removal of the "offensive" photos. The fact that the reason for their removal was the partial nudity and their "sexual content" just shows how warped our attitude towards human bodies are.

Why is it acceptable for us to ogle at breasts owned by celebrities and models but not at the butchered breast, or the absence of one, in a woman with breast cancer? Needless to say, unless you have kinky tendencies, the sight of a mastectomised breast is not exactly one to provoke sexual arousal. In fact most women I have met who have lost their breasts this way, were concerned about how this will affect their relationship with their partners, or, if they were single, whether any man would ever want to be intimate with them again. One divorced woman who had had mastectomy once said to me, "Will I ever be able to get naked in front of a man?"

What an irony it must have been for Sharon Adams to receive a message from Facebook saying, "we are removing your boob pictures because we don't allow pictures of sexual content" when the last thing she must have been feeling was sexy or sexual.

Because the disease affects a part of a woman's body that is so closely linked to her sexuality and her identity as a woman, mastectomy is an operation that can bring serious psychological consequences to the patient. Elderly ladies are often better at shrugging it off saying, "My husband knows I am feminine; I don't need my breasts to prove it to him." But younger ones understandably prefer opting for breast reconstruction post-mastectomy.

Not exactly bionic woman
Breast reconstruction is not nearly as straightforward as a "boob job" is. It requires taking skin and fat from elsewhere in the patient's body and transferring it to the breast area, and, surprise surprise: the new breasts come with no nipples.

Nipple and areola reconstruction is an optional, usually separate, operation. A reconstructed breast cannot be used for feeding babies so the addition of a nipple is an aesthetic choice, one could almost say sheer vanity. It is no laughing matter: the general shape and look of the breast can be restored through surgery, but there is little sensation on the new breast because the nerves will have been cut off. Think "cyborg" and his bionic arms and legs, i.e. it looks like the real thing but it is not.

Let's put it this way: it is not something any woman wants to go through. Whereas in cases of early detection, less radical surgery is required, it is still a traumatic experience that affects women not only physically but psychologically and sexually as well. Scars eventually subside, but a breast cancer patient's relationship with her body is forever changed by the experience.

Good boob bad boob

So what is the turning point of a good boob image into a bad boob one. What is the difference between, for instance, sex symbol Angelina Jolie stripping off her top to reveal her bosoms to the world and a mother momentarily exposing a breast to feed her baby in public. Or a breast cancer patient deciding to show her scars on Facebook to raise awareness.

Isn't it more honest to say that a breast image that does not offer a direct mental association with sex, either because it has been disfigured or it comes with a suckling child hanging at the end of it, is what people consider "offensive"? What we are really saying, when we tell breastfeeding mothers and breast cancer patients to cover up is, save us from the horror of boobs that do not make men immediately want to grope or sexually fantasise; or worse. Because somewhere in our psyches there is a deeply embedded belief that is what breasts are for: an aphrodisiac for men and a sexual hook for women who desire to ensnare men.

Nothing wrong with that, mind. Males and females of all species in the animal world are conditioned by nature to mate, reproduce and die. Humans are no different, and if shoving one's breasts in the general direction of eligible males is what it takes a woman to ensure progeny, so be it, though the moral stance on this may differ in each culture.

Reality check

Facebook's reaction to Sharon Adams' images may have been a genuine administrative mistake, and they have now rectified it by apologising and allowing her to re-upload her photos. But it is symptomatic of society's warped attitude towards breasts and human sexuality.

If Facebook is to impose codes of public decency on its site, perhaps a more wholesome, if somewhat draconian, measure would be to censor images of healthy-breasted women displaying any cleavage while freeing up someone like Sharon Adams to showcase her lack of one, post-surgery.

Maybe women have got their focus wrong by trying too hard to expose their breasts to the admiring eyes of the viewing public. Perhaps the message Sharon Adams was trying to get through was: pay attention to your boobs yourself. Before you let men touch them, touch them yourself and check for any suspicious lumps.

One in nine women in the UK are diagnosed with breast cancer every year. Even though survival rates for breast cancer after five years are high and increasing due to improved treatments and earlier diagnosis, it is still a nasty disease that can maim and kill.

For Sharon the decision to allow the entire Internet world to view her scarred chest so that fewer women have to lose their breasts to cancer was an act of immeasurable courage.

Facebook administrators fell into a big no-no of a booby-trap.