Awareness

I'm totally laughing at some people on Facebook today.

Last year's campaign about women posting their bra colors to raise awareness for breast cancer was a bit silly. I never really understood how posting a cryptic message on FB that only a handful of your friends understood would promote awareness for anything. I believe it was Stacey who pointed out that if you wanted to do something to defeat breast cancer, make a donation. Or talk openly about your experience or the experiences of people you know. Posting a cryptic message isn't really going to accomplish anything.

This year it's worse. I got a few messages this week about the new campaign involving a number system where you post a number relating to the month you were born and a food your "craving" based on a chart corresponding a food with the date, so that mine would read something like, "I'm 4 weeks and craving creme eggs." Um. I'm not sure how making people think you're pregnant when your not has anything at all to do with breast cancer.

Furthermore, in a lot of ways this goes beyond last year's silliness. First, you're about to start some rumors about yourself that you're going to have a hard time clearing up. I've already seen a couple of status updates this morning stating "I'm not really pregnant! It's about breast cancer." Um, no, it's not. Really. Bra colors had more to do with boobies than making people think your pregnant. And I suspect some people won't see the updated message and will continue to think you're preggers. Good luck with that. And talk about confusion, can you imagine me posting that, with the world knowing I'm actually 20 weeks along?

The bigger issue for me is the fact that pregnancy is a huge sensitive issue for millions of women. I can't tell you how many women I know who have battled infertility. Or lost a baby during pregnancy. Or who had unwanted pregnancies that ended either in abortion, which has it's on repercussions, or adoption. There's just too many major issues surrounding pregnancies to ask women to make a joke of it. You want to find a ridiculous cryptic message to post on Facebook for awareness, post the number of women you've known who were effected by breast cancer. Post the amount of money you want to raise this year to put towards research. Do something useful, not damaging.