For those of you who don't know what I am referring to, the email I received said:
Some fun is going on.... just 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... HahaI was asked to do this by my good friends daughter so here it goes... have fun
The issue I am having is with regards to how this is supposed to spread cancer awareness when there is absolutely no mention of cancer anywhere except this email that men aren't allowed to see?
I worry that instead of raising any kind of awareness, all this does is give men a chance to picture the women who write their color in their underwear, which is not my idea of fun. I am pretty sure that many of the people who have posted their color would never tell hundreds of people what color bra they are wearing under any other context...
I commented on it in my status, writing "do we actually believe that posting bra colors is going to raise cancer awareness as opposed to just making people think about what we look like under our shirts?" To which I received the response (from a woman) "it's supposed to be a game. you know, fun? and now you just told every guy on your friends' list what the game is. take a chill pill. you really don't need to rant about everything."
I don't need to rant about everything, but I have to love how I am often not only dismissed, but silenced when I give an opinion (pet peeve right now, because it is the second time this week). If I were presenting a dominant opinion, it wouldn't be considered ranting.
The best quote I've read about this topic was found here
"Call me a humourless Feminazi if you like, but this email is not about raising awareness of breast cancer. It's about using a disease that has a devastating impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people as a spurious justification for discussing saucy undies. It's about women trying to show that they're uninhibited and up for a laugh by inviting their friends to speculate about them in their underwear rather than to think about them as sentient, intelligent human beings. It's about women objectifying themselves. And for anyone who believes that the updates are really only for us gals I'd invite you to compare the number of updates saying "red satin w little bows" with the number saying "grey cotton (orig. white), straps frayed, bought Bhs 2001".
To sum up my opinion, I am not going to 'post my color' nor do I think this has anything to do with breast cancer. Neither do the men who have figured this out, considering someone just posted "things would be much better if women would just post a profile picture"
If this was really about breast cancer awareness why doesn't everyone write "(color) for breast cancer". For people who aren't in on the reason writing a color does not spread awareness about anything except for your ability to spell a color. Looking at the email you received it looks like there is another motive for this, "it will be fun to see how long it takes for the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status". This seems to me that it is a game to play with the guys on their lists instead of what it was supposed/meant to be about.
ReplyDeleteI know a girl on my list who looked up what was happening on Google, so it's not like it was a big secret on why girls were writing colors.