Breast Cancer Awareness: Sexualization, Selfies (Self-Esteem)

The Sun's campaign with CoppaFeel! to raise awareness of breast cancer certainly seemed to raise a few eyebrows and my thoughts are in keeping with those expressed over at 'I was a Teenage Feminist' regarding the sexualization of breast cancer. There is also an extensive piece over on The Telegraph about the problems with The Sun's approach and the thoughts expressed there echo my own. In particular it raises the important point that the Page 3 campaign did not really have women at the centre of it, in the sense of Page 3 having always been geared towards men and for their entertainment. Yet statistically women are at a far greater risk of breast cancer.

So, this emergence of women taking make-up-free selfies for raising awareness seems to counteract that problem right? In all honesty, I can't slam any attempt to raise awareness for cancer because something is better than nothing but there are underpinning ideas to this campaign which irk me. Firstly, this rests on the notion of women hiding under their make-up on a daily basis and that being 'naked' to the world is something only to be done under extreme circumstances. It's been lovely seeing my friends in all their natural beauty but surely this should become more commonplace and we should celebrate this in a everday context, and not something used against us as if to say "you're so brave going without make-up", reinforcing societal ideals about how women should look. Secondly, raising awareness is one thing. But we need action to go with that. It's good to see people posting their make-up-free selfies along with reference to their donation but there's been an equal amount who haven't. It'll be interesting to see other takes on this. At the moment, all I've seen online is the particularly good piece over at Huffington Post which takes a A Beauty Myth stance on it (despite protests!). And on a not so unrelated note...Girlguiding have launched a body confidence badge to raise girls' self-esteem, hoorah!