Oh, grownups! You ruin everything. First you take away our hugs and now you question our innuendo-laced philanthropic fashion choices? A secondary school in Kitsap has prohibited students from wearing a popular breast cancer awareness bracelet because it “caused problems in classrooms. Students made inappropriate gestures.” According the the Klitsap Sun:
Sixteen-year-old student Brittany Indvik and some friends were wearing a pink and white version of the bracelet emblazoned with: “I (Heart) Boobies. Keep-A-Breast.” But administrators have asked students to leave their bracelets at home, or to wear them turned inside out.
Indvik said she wants to wear the bracelets as a way to recognize the fight against breast cancer. The Keep-A-Breast Foundation, a nonprofit based in Southern California, is dedicated to teaching young people about breast cancer.
In a totally unexpected development, when adults told a group of teenagers they couldn’t do something it made them want to do it even more.
Victoria Burton said the ban has had the opposite effect on the popularity of the bracelets. “It wasn’t a big deal until the teachers started giving the kids such a hard time and making them turn them inside out. Now more kids are paying attention,” she said.
School officials have not yet asked students to leave their actual breasts at home. Which I imagine also cause problems in classrooms and lead to inappropriate gestures.
My problem with these types of (anti) breast cancer campaigns is that by sexualizing breasts, they promote boobs=awesome/ boobs=woman thinking. Often times mastectomies (these days performed as a preventative measure in addition to removing cancer) make women feel like all of their femininity and sexuality has been stripped away. I remember my best friend telling me about her mother crying in the dressing room after trying on bathing suit tops years after she underwent a double mastectomy. Referring to breast cancer as simply a menace to totes awesome boobs is really disrespectful to the survivors that are still struggling with all the social-implications of breasts and what not having them says about a woman. You’re not saving a pair of tits by advocating for breast cancer research. You’re saving a person.
Christian side-hugs all around!
Uh, so did we misspell “Kitsap” on purpose there, or what, exactly?
@ amoebicpassion: RE: “boobs=awesome/ boobs=woman”
Those are two entirely separate points of view, no matter whose opinions you’re talking about. Everyone, from the most pig-headed chauvinist to the most bra-burning feminist would agree that “boobs = awesome” for all kinds of different reasons, but only certain swaths of society see “boobs = woman.”
By conflating the two together you’re obscuring/confusing absolutely everything that’s going on here and ruining whatever argument you may have had also.