The captain of the cheer squad of cancers, breast cancer, is getting another “awareness” nod, this time in a flood of Facebook status updates announcing a single color.
If you saw enough of them but didn’t get the e-mail cluing you in, you’d probably be able to guess from the preponderance of “red,” “black,” and “leopard” showing up in status updates. The game is meant to be an awareness raiser, but like many endeavors undertaken via social networking, simply putting a single-word color in your Facebook status shockingly does precious little to educate anyone about breast cancer and is a textbook example of internet slacktivism .
Feminist blogs have their panties in a knot over the phenomenon, (you ladies get so hysterical!) although I don’t see the point of the seething rage over a pointless Facebook trend. Yes, other cancers aren’t as marketable or treatable, but I just don’t see a viral status update trend upcoming for colon cancer. Do expect a flood of not-too-clever parodies over the next few weeks.
You’re male and didn’t get twenty copies of the slacktivist screed in your inbox? This is one form of the plea that landed in every female of Facebook’s inbox sometime over the past few days (unless you’re a loser with no friends.)
Some fun is going on…. just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY girls, no men …. It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status.
Pass it on & be sure to do your breast self-exams!