As a breast cancer survivor and author of the blog Stupid Dumb Breast Cancer, Ann Marie Giannino-Otis is a huge advocate for breast cancer awareness. But even though she had a double mastectomy to save her life, Giannino-Otis doesn’t agree with campaigns that encourage people to “save the boobies.”

“It has nothing to do with saving my breasts and has everything to do with saving myself,” said Giannino-Otis. “It really degrades what we’re trying to do.”

While they may seem like funny and harmless ways to promote breast cancer research, these campaigns send the wrong message. They encourage the objectification of women by putting the focus of breast cancer research on saving breasts, not saving lives. By sexualizing breast cancer, “saving the boobies” hurts the cause.

The Keep a Breast foundation launched its “I love boobies!” campaign in 2000, which sparked a trend of “boob pun” followers. The Save the Ta-Tas Foundation began in 2004 and central New York’s Save the Boobies movement started in 2005, along with plenty of other variations on the “save the boobs” theme.

With so many of these popular campaigns out there, using humor to fight breast cancer seems to be effective. But even though a cure is the shared goal, how these groups raise awareness still matters.

The real problem doesn’t arise from trying to “save the boobies,” but from the objectification that makes these campaigns so successful. By worrying about saving breasts, these campaigns imply that this potentially fatal disease is actually about a woman losing her sexuality.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in Angelina Jolie’s decision to have a preventative double mastectomy. According to her May 14, 2013 New York Times op-ed, Jolie reduced her chance of breast cancer from 87 to just 5 percent by having the procedure. There were plenty of congratulations for her courage, but many people mourned her apparent loss of femininity and treated her decision like a personal loss.

These disrespectful reactions reveal a huge problem in how society views mastectomies and breast cancer in general. We seem to think that having breasts or not defines a woman’s sexuality, and campaigns that focus on saving breasts only perpetuate this stereotype.

Giannino-Otis also pointed out that 1 in 1,000 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer. Campaigns to “save the boobies” portray breast cancer as a woman’s disease and completely alienate this population.

Instead of these campaigns that sexualize breast cancer, Giannino-Otis said people need to see breast cancer and mastectomies for what they really are. “This is not a pretty boob job,” she said. “We don’t walk away with perfect boobs.”

The SCAR project is an amazing example of the realities of breast cancer. This project asserts that “breast cancer is not a pink ribbon” or some cute disease to be sexualized. It does this through its powerful images of women who lost their breasts but beat breast cancer.

Since we didn’t “save the ta-tas” for these women, are they failures? No. Losing one’s breasts doesn’t mean a loss of sexuality or even always a loss of life, and we need to stop branding breast cancer like it does.

Of course, it would be amazing if we could both cure breast cancer and save breasts. But since this isn’t always possible, our main priority should be saving lives.

Campaigns that focus on saving breasts don’t convey this message. Though this may not be their intention, they encourage objectification of women and sexualize a disease. Instead of focusing on “saving second base,” these campaigns need to revamp their slogans to show there is much more to breast cancer than boobs.

Kathryn Krawczyk is a freshman magazine major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at kjkrawcz@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @KathrynKrawczyk.

Published on April 1, 2015 at 11:11 pm