What Color is Your Bra?
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Colors have dominated the Facebook pages of women everywhere in Facebook statuses. “Red” said one friend. Not happy to say the less-racy “beige”, my cousin daringly put “nude” as her Facebook status, probably inspiring some pretty graphic imagery.
I’m not going to tell you what color I wrote.
What does it mean? It refers to bra colors and is supposed to raise awareness for breast cancer. A viral Facebook message was sent asking women to write their bra colors in place of their Facebook statuses.The Washington Post had an article today examining whether or not the trend was just for fun or whether or not this kind of campaign would have any teeth behind it.
Surprisingly, it seems to have worked. At one breast cancer institute, the fan base went from 170 to 700 in one day. This number seems small, but if you consider the number of breast cancer awareness institutes, it may actually signify that new methods are needed to raise awareness of social causes.
Nobody knows who started the trend and like many viral “attacks”, no one is claiming responsibility for the message.
I read an NPR blog post today by a woman wondering if this was just another example of "slacktivism and complaining that she knew nothing more about breast cancer as a result of viral message. She defines Slacktivism basically as useless social networking for activist causes.
My impression is you have to start somewhere. Many Facebookers are high school students and might not be so impressed with a different kind of ad campaign.
As one of the many people who has a friend suffering from breast cancer, I strongly believe that increasing awareness is necessary. We need more educational campaigns about breast cancer so that women are taught at an earlier age how to effectively check their breasts. We also need more investment into cures, and alternatives to radiation because of the bad effects of this kind of therapy.
I hope that the groups that are getting more members are taking advantage of their new-found members to get more information out there. The next step is creating events to raise both money and awareness and making them more accessible to those who are not in the $1,000. a plate bracket.
