Awareness

I do not think that the breast-cancer culture helps women. I agree with Ehrenreich that the Women’s Health Movement of the 1970s-1980s was crucial and very important to help women take a step up and begin to advocate for themselves and their rights as free embodied agents. However, I have often criticized the breast-cancer awareness movement myself. Watching 20-30 people wearing pink t-shirts, pushing strollers and carrying balloons down Main Street this summer made me angry. We’re all ‘aware’ of breast-cancer now. Mammograms are required by most heath insurance companies. Traveling mammogram busses make sure everyone has the opportunity to get one and every gynecologist I have ever spoken to or read has advocated for monthly self-examinations. So, since we’re all ‘aware’ now, why keep marching? I agree with the statements proffered by one of the men interviewed for the article, they’re better off writing a check and moving on, that’s much more effective. I realize this sounds unsupportive of those who are actually survivors of breastcancer but the author seems to have a very healthy perspective on the issue.

We shouldn’t be focusing so much on a cure which hasn’t been all that effective up until this point anyway, we need to be focusing on the cause. Just as those who purport the need to find a cure for diabetes should be focusing on the cause of diabetes in order to prevent rather than treat it. The number of cases of Type II diabetes far outscale the number of Type I. As my boyfriend and I watched the marchers move down the street he turned to me and asked when they were going to have a march for prostate cancer. I shrugged and said I doubted they ever would. Prostate cancer is highly prevalent in men but there is no great movement out there, no prostate cancer matchbox cars (as the author pointed out) and I suppose it’s understood that men will either heed or disregard their doctors advice to seek regular exams for early detection. Yet, with this huge prevalence of a man’s cancer which runs neck-in-neck with this female cancer (thought, unlike prostate cancer, men can and do get breast cancer) it is the woman’s cancer which gets all the hype, all the commercial opportunistic endeavors. I think it’s the same with the way that women are the ones who are most heavily hit in all consumer fields. We are the “shoppers” and we need teddy bears and crayons to make our “boo boos” go away.

Women infantilize themselves by parading around in pink t-shirts crying “save the tatas” and “hooray for boobies!/I <3 boobies” “walkin’ by buns off for boobs.” What kind of derision would a man face if he started making stickers or buttons with slogans like “Bros for balls” or “prostate posse” or “check your junk for cancerous funk” or for penile cancer “liveschlong” or, my friend, Mr. Robinson’s favorite childish slogan I asked him to come up with: “better spread than dead.” (He is a prostate cancer survivor himself.) Mrs. Deery (his wife) came up with, “If you lose your family jewels you’ll never become a prince charming.” The one slogan I managed to dredge up from the internet about prostate cancer was a mundane, “Don’t procrastinate…check your prostate!” Fabulous, right? It’s not that equivalent slogans for male specific cancers are difficult to come up with, it’s just that they are not dignified or proper enough to use for masculine persons but they are perfectly applicable and good for women. We participate and perpetuate our own denigration based solely in our breasts.

Ehrenreich argues that the breast cancer culture causes a woman with breast cancer become someone who is longer a woman, a person, just cancer (459). It “blur[s] the line between selfhood and thing-hood” becoming a composite of organic and inorganic materials (469). She notes that  “Awareness beats secrecy and stigma of course, but I can’t help noticing that the existential space in which a friend has earnestly advised me to ‘confront [my] mortality’ bears a striking resemblance to a mall” (460). It has reached an astonishingly commercial and superficial level. Ehrenreich notes, “The ultra feminine theme of the breast cancer marketplace –the prominence for example of cosmetics and jewelry –could be understood as a response to the disastrous effects on one’s looks. But the infantilizing trope is a little harder to account for” (460).

She writes extensively on the desire of the movement to infantilize women, especially citing the presence of crayons in the tote from the Libby Ross Foundation. She comments, “Possibly the idea is that regression to a state of childlike dependency puts one in the best frame of mind with which to endure the prolonged and toxic treatments. Or it may be, that, in some versions of the prevailing gender ideology, femininity is by its nature incompatible with full adulthood” (460).

I thought it interesting that she found the extensive availability of personal stories and experiences caused the author to compare her experiences to those of others, from the way she describes it, almost obsessively. The same way women compare themselves obsessively on the fronts of appearance, weight, attractiveness, etc.  “There is nothing very feminist—in an ideological or activist sense—about the mainstream of breast-cancer” (461).

The feminists want a cure but they also want to understand the causes of the disease. “’Bad’ genes of the inherited variety are thought to account for fewer than 10 percent of breast cancers, and only 30 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have any known risk factor…Bad lifestyle choices life a fatty diet have, after brief popularity with the medical profession, been largely ruled out. Hence suspicion should focus on environmental carcinogens, the feminists argue, such as plastics, pesticides…and the industrial runoff in our ground water” (461).This puts the feminist breast cancer movements in line with environmental and anti-corporate groups while the fluffy bunny approach to breast-cancer remains mainstream. “sentimentality and good cheer” (462). It is the “Darling of corporate America” and “a way for companies to brand themselves friends of the middle-aged female market.” “Breast cancer provides a way of doing something for women without being feminist” (462). Because the movement is politically correct and a way for corporations to show their love and support for women without having to take a stance on anything controversial, those companies have found ways to cash in on the market of all female buyers by appearing sentimental and empathetic to their cause.

The author notes that all this hullaballoo and great affair begins to look like “a positive embrace of the disease” (462). She found numerous “testimonies to the redemptive power of the disease” (463). While, I am an advocate of finding the good in everything and learning through suffering, I don’t think that the vast corporate sphere needs to have a place in helping women make themselves over through cancer. The author writes,“in our implacably optimistic breast-cancer culture, the disease offers more than the intangible benefits of spiritual upward mobility. You can defy the inevitable disfigurements and come out, more femme. In the lore of the disease…chemotherapy smoothes and tightens the skin, helps you lose weight; and when your hair comes back, it will be fuller, softer, easier to control, and perhaps a surprising new color. ..opportunities for self-improvement abound” (463).

            The companies that fund and perpetuate the breast cancer culture cult are the ones who are cashing in on the $12-16 billion-a-year business in surgery, “breast health centers,” chemotherapy “infusion suites,” radiation treatment centers, mammograms, and drugs” (464-465). Even though, “The benefits of routine mammography are not well established; if they do exist, they are not as great as many women hope” (465). Mammography might not even be successful and sometimes, all early detection does is prolong the amount of time a woman was aware of her condition.

The author summarizes her viewpoint by stating, “America’s breast-cancer cult can be judged as an outbreak of mass delusion, celebrating survivorhood by downplaying mortality and promoting obedience to medical protocols known to have limited efficacy” and that “obedience is the message behind the infantilizing theme in breast-cancer culture, as represented by the teddy bears, the crayons, and the prevailing pinkness” (465).

I think this breast cancer culture makes breast cancer cute, cuddly, pink, approachable, and something which is almost to be looked forward to. It is something which permeates our consumerist existences and yet has little to no effect on the number of women who die from breast cancer every year. The fact that we pour so much time and effort into a movement which produces little to no results is disheartening and a sign that the author’s viewpoint is accurate. The industry which perpetuates breast cancer also claims to oppose it but it cannot successfully do both, though it can rake in vast amounts of money in both arenas. The movement is a rouse to keep us all buying in the name of righteousness while we ignore the real issues and problems at hand. Keep the women happy through material goods and cute slogans but don’t actually take a stand and do something about breast cancer prevention seems to be the underlying motive. I think breast cancer patients would benefit more from having others take the disease seriously and reverently rather than seeing it as a marketing opportunity.

Proving Something

Messner used sport to prove his masculinity by joining a “D Team” basketball team precisely because he was insecure about his “baby fat” his height (5’2”) and the fact that he was “still prepubescent with no facial hair and a high voice that [he] artificially tried to lower” (401). While on the team, he became “infatuated with Timmy” but later “aggressively rejected him” (401). His efforts to prove that he was an athletically competitive and competently aggressive player caused him to act out in aggressive violence against Timmy. Even though he was captain of the team, he wasn’t the best player and he wasn’t “happy or secure” in that position (402). He felt that he needed to prove himself a thorough heterosexual, “100% heterosexual” and so he joined in when his other teammates called Timmy a “geek” and a “faggot” (402). He used sport to underline his masculinity even though for a while, the delay he experienced before fully entering puberty at the onset of high school and his attraction to Timmy who later became the subject of disdain and ridicule seemed to be holding him back from being perceived as “100% heterosexual.” He wanted to be a “man” and men were rough and aggressive and good at basketball, they did not play on the periphery of the game or feel things for other players that wre anything but strictly platonic or competitive feelings. Messner unconsciously used the basketball team to underscore his vehemently heterosexual identity. He decided to have a “moment of engagement with hegemonic masculinity, where [he] actively took up the male group’s task of constructing heterosexual/masculine identities in the contest of sport.” His aggressive action toward Timmy served to underscore his commitment to that task and to quell his fears that he might not be failing at that goal (402). He picked on Timmy with the rest of the team and chose him as the “victim” for his aggressive maneuver primarily to underscore his heterosexuality in contrast with the weak, effeminate, and otherwise “unsuccessfully male/heterosexual” Timmy.

            Waddell also used sports to construct his identity in regard to his gender but he also used sports as “his closet” (403). He clung to so called “masculine” such as football and track and field as a way to reinforce the perceptions that he was a “red-blooded American man” even though he would have preferred to participate in other sports such as dance and gymnastics but he grew up in the 1950s which he described as “a terrible time to live” (403). He says that it was obvious to him that “male ballet dancers were effeminate, that they were what most people would call faggots. And [he] thought [he] just couldn’t handle that…[he] was totally closeted and very concerned about being male.” (403) Thus, choosing sports that he felt men played helped him to assert his gender identity as male. He chose those sports in order to “do something to protect [his] image of [himself] as male…so [he] threw himself into athletics—[he] played football, gymnastics, track and field…[he] was a jock—that’s how [he] was viewed, and [he] was comfortable with that.” (403). He says, “I wanted the male, macho image of an athlete. So I was protected by a very hard shell. I was clearly aware of what I was doing… I often felt compelled to go along with a lot of locker room garbage because I wanted that image” (403). He entered sports and constructed “a masculine/heterosexual athletic identity precisely because he feared being revealed as gay.” (403). He used sports as a way to reinforce the idea that he was heterosexual even though he was not really. He needed sports as a way to project a heterosexual image in order to protect himself from the negative backlash of being anything but heterosexual. “Waddell seemed to be consciously ‘acting’ to control and regulate others’ perceptions of him by constructing a public ‘front stage’ personal that differed radically from what he believed to be his ‘true’ inner self.” (403)

Messner notes, “as young male athletes, heterosexuality and masculinity were not something we “were,” but something we were doing” (403). Both men used sports as a way to discover how to behave as men and as heterosexuals. He writes, “doing heterosexuality as an ongoing practice through which we sought (a) to avoid stigma, embarrassment, ostracism, or perhaps worse if we were even suspected of being gay; and (b) to link ourselves into systems of power, status, and privilege that appear to be the birthright of ‘real men’” (403). Both stories point “to the importance of the athletic institution as a context in which peers mutually construct and re-construct narrow definitions of masculinity—and heterosexuality is considered to be a rock-solid foundation of this conception of masculinity” (403). The institution of sports is an “institution of compulsory heterosexuality.” Messner notes that there are “extremely high levels of homophobia that are often endemic in boys’ and men’s organized sports” (403).

Women who play sports however, are often deemed “unfeminine.” By the very fact that they are participating in the realm of athleticism which is an institution founded basically to make men look masculine. It is firmly rooted in the effort of promoting masculinity as it is understood by our culture as traits of aggression, assertion, strength, and dominance. By participating in the institution of sport they are participating in one of the institutions which is utilized to formulate and maintain ideas of masculinity. This means that they are often ridiculed, considered homosexual or “unwomanly.” It is a major problem because there is nothing about athleticism which is inherently gendered or sexualized but society has endowed sports with those unspoken (and sometimes vocally spoken) characteristics and defining notions about gender and sexuality. When women cross over into realms which have been determined to be masculine they are deemed deviant and therefore ostracized and given a difficult time.

Bliss Can Be Bought

When I dogsit, I tend to watch copious amounts of “Say Yes to the Dress” which is Tivo’d by the family I housesit for. Since I can’t work the remote to watch television being currently aired (I don’t have cable and really can’t maneuver around 3,000 channels) I watch what they have “taped.” This also includes “16 and Pregnant” and “The Secret Life of the American Teenager”. These are not shows I watch on my own, or really care for aside from a minor sociological curiosity. However, I am strangely fascinated by “Say Yes to the Dress” simply because I like to gawk over how utterly insane and inane these women and their families make the event of getting married. I don’t plan to get married to my life partner, though we are currently, casually, planning a commitment ceremony which is a gesture to our families and an excuse for use to get needed gifts such as a mattress and maybe a blender (Though, we’d really love a waffle maker if anyone here is looking for “John and Alex Love Gift” ideas.). However, that sense of obligation to have any kind of formal recognition of our love is one that is only being casually entertained and is by no means a necessity or end-goal for us. We are us and will be regardless of official approval granted by family, government, or gods. The institution of marriage itself has been deemed discriminatory and embodies a certain set of associations and societal expectations that we do not condone and will not approve by entering into any formal “contracts” of that nature.

Still, I watch “wedding porn” and sometimes gaze at table center ideas and invite formats simply out of curiosity and a kind of horror to see what sort of superficial value people place on what should be a very serious and deep time in their lives. I can’t imagine spending $38,319 dollars on a wedding like one couple I read about in Modern Bride. Their itemized list of expenses included $1,000 for hair and makeup for six people, $900 for stationary, $2,306 for flowers, and $4,000 for photography (http://www.brides.com/wedding-answers-tools/wedding-timeline-budget/2011/07/how-much-does-a-wedding-cost-venue). That sort of extravagance is something I cannot conceive of both because I don’t have the financial backing to dream of doing it myself but also because I wouldn’t if I did. $38,000 is a house payment, several house payments. The kind of attention paid to dresses, floral arrangements, catering, lighting, photography, gifts for the wedding party and guests is seriously overemphasized. All of the categories the website is broken into are concerned with some kind of commodity that entails weddings. Even the links and stories about “real weddings” are not so concerned with the relationship details of the couple but rather their financial and decorative choices. They have a brief bit about how the couple met, perhaps their age, and then they jump straight into location, dress brand and cost, catering details, number of guests invited, invitation quirks, etc. They are also very interested in helping the reader discover how they can have a similar wedding experience. How to recreate the table settings, make their own invitations or find the same press or floral companies to make them for their very own use. These weddings are about spectacle and the magazine serves to flaunt and perpetuate that sort of thinking.

Modern Bride also turned out to be extremely hetero-normative, though not entirely. Five out of the five hundred “real life” couples I looked at were same-sex couples. That’s…you know, 1% of all couples represented on the website. However, they did have a section on “fun summer hues” for cakes where they featured various rainbow decorated wedding treats. They were advertised as seasonally appropriate for a summer wedding but also doubled as an appealing option for an audience who might be looking for a nod to gay pride. It was irritating and confounding that the website would bury these kinds of acknowledgements of same sex unions under mounds and mounds of heterosexual propaganda. Their attempt to escape criticism for being tolerant of non-normative wedding practices is almost the equivalent of not including them at all. Their attempt to walk the fine line between appealing to both groups was not very successful or convincing.

Overall, I discovered that the conception of weddings represented by Modern Bride was one which presents them as an event designed to impress and please other people. They even had a whole article about how to “Create a memorable event by putting your guests’ needs first” (http://www.brides.com/wedding-answers-tools/wedding etiquette/2010/05/BLM FW09 WeddingGuestNeeds). These representations of weddings do, as Morrison asserts perpetuate “traditional American values” that is, they are “big, expensive and involve a lot of shopping.” Additionally, they are celebrations of “well-off white people” with the occasional “bridesmaid of color thrown in as a nod to multiculturalism” or the occasional “couple of color,” or same sex couple all included in the name of diversity within an industry concerned with exclusivity.