Angry Mum on Breast Cancer Awareness.

I’m really sick of these attention seeking facebook messages doing the rounds that claim to be about breast cancer awareness. They contain no information about breast cancer and seem to be nothing more than a poor attempt to get male attention.

There are several versions of this message, all requiring us to update our facebook status. The first one asked us to post the colour of our bra, the second wanted us to post where we like to keep our handbags. A few more have followed with things like how long it takes us to do our hair and our shoe size. The one thing that is consistent with these messages is the part that requires us to ‘not tell any males what the status updates mean, keep them guessing!’

I actually lost a friend (well an acquaintance) due to my dislike of these messages.  I updated my facebook status with something to the effect of ‘I don’t see how writing the colour of my bra on my facebook status will do anything for breast cancer awareness’. This girl emailed me straight away, and begged me to take it down. I was ruining it for everyone!! Several nasty emails followed, with me finally telling this woman to please just fuck off. My status update that caused such a fuss with this girl would have created more ‘awareness’ than any of her statuses about bras or handbags. Purely because it actually contained the words ‘breast cancer’.  

5 Quick Facts about Breast Cancer:

1.      1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer.
2.      Each year, a small number of men are also diagnosed with or die from breast cancer.
3.      85% of all diagnoses have no family history.
4.      Breast cancer is the leading cause of death in women between ages 40 and 55.
5.      Any change needs to be looked at. In fact, for women below 40, it is actually more common for the cancer to present itself in the form of dimpling or thickened skin rather than a lump.

Feel free to pass this information on to anyone. It’s not about playing games with men; it’s about keeping people alive.