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October may well be Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We may well all have the opportunity to buy pink mixers, pink sewing machines, pink vacuums, pink rotary cutters, pink pinking shears, what-the-fuck-ever (and by the way, where the fuck are the pink hammers, pink solder guns, and pink floorjacks? Are they blue for prostate cancer?) and thereby demonstrate that we have some sort of social consciousness and absolutely no decorating scheme unless we'd LIKE to look like we live in a wedding cake, but I have my own sort of Awareness Month in mind here.
I am declaring October Breast Awareness Month, and I will kill anyone who uses the term "boob", particularly in a pseudo-inspirational "Breast Cancer Awareness Picture", featuring a little Hummel girl, or maybe it's Holly Hobby after a bad day with the Pepto-Bismol, and the slogan "Tickle me pink and find a cure before I grow boobs."
I just. What? What the fucking fuck is up with that? What? I don't even, look, my brain's in an aphasic spasm here. What? What?
Seriously. What?
NO. That is so very, very, very wrong! That is up there with all the other cutesy things we do to avoid calling things by their proper names (and okay, I am not a fan of some words either, but STILL FOR GOD'S SAKE, THIS IS COMPLETELY WRONG.) and somehow - somehow - it sort of, you know, defeats the purpose of calling it "Breast Cancer Awareness Month", if we're going to cute it up and paint it in pink and slap "boobs" on it! It's exactly the same as that theatre in Florida that censored the sign for "The Vagina Monologues" because some woman didn't want to tell her daughter what a vagina was! It is NOT empowering, it is NOT inspirational (not that I think ANY of the marketing around Breast Cancer Awareness Month is, but that's another post entirely) and it is NOTHING other than offensive and insulting, and it reduces us all to the level of third graders, giggling about boobs and peepees and whether our older siblings "do it".
ARGH!
Cancer, any cancer, is a serious fucking problem, people. It's SRS BZNS, and you know I'm serious when I lolcat. I, like everyone else on the planet, has lost friends and loved ones and has watched and helped where able as friends have struggled with it, to cancer, and I am NOT AMUSED. I am every bit as insulted as I am every time someone I know says something about boobs or tits to avoid using The Dreaded Word Breast. Are breasts REALLY that scary? If they are, someone needs to alert Homeland Security to the fact that fully half the population of the US (actually, slightly more) has either GOT a pair of them already or has the potential to have them, and we need to do something about that right. the. fuck. now.
We'll start by raising the terror alert level to pink.
If we can't call something by the right name, how can we assume that we're going to be able to find solutions to the problems? That's not a concept only relevant to breast cancer, either - that's relevant to everything we face as a problem - let's rename it so it's not scary.
Wrong.
Names have power, and calling something by the right name is a strong step in the right direction, because then we can quit giggling behind our hands and actually work on the problems rather than being amused-like-five-year-olds over fart jokes. Refusing to name something gives it power, not us, and I am not at all into that. Not if it's something we intend to have serious discourse about.
But, of course, we don't. Cancer beats us. Cancer is not something we can treat effectively, cancer is not something we can prevent effectively, it confuses us and it probably should, given that viruses have been around a lot longer than our monkey asses. (For reference, I'm using the last school of thought I heard, about ten years ago, that there might be a viral component to cancer - no idea if this has been proved or disproved, and I am in full bate anyway, so I fail to care.) And if we can't win, why would we talk about it?
This is why we talk about Iran instead of Iraq, Iraq instead of Nola, and EVERYTHING instead of climate change. So, perhaps, refusing to continue to call a part of everyone's body a boob, we could call breasts by their right name?
It might mean something if we did.
I am declaring October Breast Awareness Month, and I will kill anyone who uses the term "boob", particularly in a pseudo-inspirational "Breast Cancer Awareness Picture", featuring a little Hummel girl, or maybe it's Holly Hobby after a bad day with the Pepto-Bismol, and the slogan "Tickle me pink and find a cure before I grow boobs."
I just. What? What the fucking fuck is up with that? What? I don't even, look, my brain's in an aphasic spasm here. What? What?
Seriously. What?
NO. That is so very, very, very wrong! That is up there with all the other cutesy things we do to avoid calling things by their proper names (and okay, I am not a fan of some words either, but STILL FOR GOD'S SAKE, THIS IS COMPLETELY WRONG.) and somehow - somehow - it sort of, you know, defeats the purpose of calling it "Breast Cancer Awareness Month", if we're going to cute it up and paint it in pink and slap "boobs" on it! It's exactly the same as that theatre in Florida that censored the sign for "The Vagina Monologues" because some woman didn't want to tell her daughter what a vagina was! It is NOT empowering, it is NOT inspirational (not that I think ANY of the marketing around Breast Cancer Awareness Month is, but that's another post entirely) and it is NOTHING other than offensive and insulting, and it reduces us all to the level of third graders, giggling about boobs and peepees and whether our older siblings "do it".
ARGH!
Cancer, any cancer, is a serious fucking problem, people. It's SRS BZNS, and you know I'm serious when I lolcat. I, like everyone else on the planet, has lost friends and loved ones and has watched and helped where able as friends have struggled with it, to cancer, and I am NOT AMUSED. I am every bit as insulted as I am every time someone I know says something about boobs or tits to avoid using The Dreaded Word Breast. Are breasts REALLY that scary? If they are, someone needs to alert Homeland Security to the fact that fully half the population of the US (actually, slightly more) has either GOT a pair of them already or has the potential to have them, and we need to do something about that right. the. fuck. now.
We'll start by raising the terror alert level to pink.
If we can't call something by the right name, how can we assume that we're going to be able to find solutions to the problems? That's not a concept only relevant to breast cancer, either - that's relevant to everything we face as a problem - let's rename it so it's not scary.
Wrong.
Names have power, and calling something by the right name is a strong step in the right direction, because then we can quit giggling behind our hands and actually work on the problems rather than being amused-like-five-year-olds over fart jokes. Refusing to name something gives it power, not us, and I am not at all into that. Not if it's something we intend to have serious discourse about.
But, of course, we don't. Cancer beats us. Cancer is not something we can treat effectively, cancer is not something we can prevent effectively, it confuses us and it probably should, given that viruses have been around a lot longer than our monkey asses. (For reference, I'm using the last school of thought I heard, about ten years ago, that there might be a viral component to cancer - no idea if this has been proved or disproved, and I am in full bate anyway, so I fail to care.) And if we can't win, why would we talk about it?
This is why we talk about Iran instead of Iraq, Iraq instead of Nola, and EVERYTHING instead of climate change. So, perhaps, refusing to continue to call a part of everyone's body a boob, we could call breasts by their right name?
It might mean something if we did.
