Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women in America. Cancer takes second place. And while breast cancer comes in second in that category, it receives among the most publicity and research funding of any health issue in America.

Moreover, breast cancer is one of the only diseases consistently sexualized by awareness campaigns. Sexualized marketing is commonplace to gain visibility in a sea of awareness and education organizations, especially when college-aged people are the target audience.

Now this rhetoric has arrived on campus. On Wednesday, the First Year Experience office at UCLA will team up with Check Your Boobies, a breast health educational organization that uses a similar tactic of capitalizing on suggestive language and imagery to draw in young people.

Check Your Boobies’ flyers bear the word “boobies” with breasts clearly depicted within the “O”s, intentionally drawing attention by playing off the taboo of seeing breasts in public spaces.

The use of sexual rhetoric to promote an important cause refocuses discussion of breast cancer on breasts themselves rather than women with the disease.

Though this language generates interest, it can damage the body image of women whose breast cancer may result in a mastectomy and can also take away from serious discussions of the disease.

The arguments against using this advertising strategy have been made before, especially during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. With an event on campus using this racy advertising to engage younger audiences, they are especially relevant now.

“I love boobies!” bracelets and shirts printed with “Save the Ta-Tas” exemplify this principle, drawing attention through a focus on the provocative depictions of breasts rather than images of women diagnosed with or recovering from breast cancer.

To be sure, Check Your Boobies’ strategy to draw young women to its educational events has been supremely successful – 17,000 women have attended their events to date, according to Heike Malakoff, founder and executive director of the organization. Educating so many young women about breast health speaks to the admirable influence the organization has on college campuses.

Check Your Boobies aims to inspire young women to be proactive about their own health and advocate for themselves, Malakoff said.

“(The logo) needs to be catchy and it needs to be fun and sort of shock people,” Malakoff said. “You want people to look at it and take note of it.”

While some might argue that any campaign that succeeds in bringing attention to breast cancer is a worthy one, flashy marketing shouldn’t be the only goal of an organization’s name and logo. The subtle messages behind those representations need to be considered carefully.

The intentions of the logo and name are innocent enough, but good intentions don’t absolve the organization of treading the line between playful and harmful.

The emblem certainly demands notice. Yet, these kinds of shock-inducing campaigns place little faith in young people’s ability to be proactive and take interest in an issue without being lured in by a catchy slogan or racy logo.

Many organizations manage to advertise to young audiences successfully without using distracting slogans to draw them in. Relay for Life, which held a fundraiser at Drake Stadium on Saturday, is a prime example of successful marketing that doesn’t rely on suggestive language to draw in young supporters.

Drawing people to Relay for Life can be difficult, but doing so without using provocative marketing to lure people in ensures that participants are invested in the cause and makes Relay for Life events more effective, said Sogol Ashrafian, a fourth-year human biology and society student and education chair for Relay for Life at UCLA.

Because Relay for Life advocates for cancer awareness in general, it exemplifies the principle that breast cancer awareness and educational organizations should not have to resort to sexual rhetoric to gain support.

The intent behind Check Your Boobies’ playful approach is to foster a frank and fearless environment for the discussion of breast health, said Kayla Driscoll, program manager for the organization. Certainly, throwing “parties” to educate women brings a sense of fun to a serious topic that may be off-putting for many young men and women.

Removing the taboo from breast cancer is a goal that merits attention, but the current campaign unfairly assumes that young men and women will not care if they are not catered to with suggestive terms and pictures.

One in eight women is diagnosed with breast cancer during her lifetime. We all have women that we care about in our lives, so therefore we have motivations for investing our time in seeking breast health education without sexualized advertising.

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7 Comments

  1. Let me get this strait… A group is bringing an event to campus that’s aimed at promoting health and raising awareness of an important health issue (which, by the way, does not only affect women – 400 men are expected to die of breast cancer this year alone), and you’re incredibly offended because it “sexualizes” the issue?

    Yes, discussions about breast cancer are often colored by a type of “hey, it’s boobs!” mentality, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Were an organization to try to raise awareness of testicular cancer with a slogan along the lines of “Check your nuts,” there would be no claims of “sexualizing” the issue of testicular cancer – instead, you would likely be harping on how “vulgar” the campaign is. Similarly, I don’t see you protesting the “Protection, Just Use It” campaign that aims to raise awareness of how to prevent the spread of HIV.

    At the end of the day, titling the event “Check your boobies” gets more people to read the second line of the poster, which gets more people to attend the event. When people attend the event, they become more educated about all facets of breast cancer, including, as you pointed out, mastectomies and the women fighting the diseases. Yes, it may simplify the issue and lead to the occasional immature snicker, but if the campaign saves lives – as raising awareness of any issue generally does. While simplification of an issue is never ideal, sometimes it is necessary to initially reach a broader audience.

    1. You bring up a good point—it doesn’t only affect women. Equating breast cancer with “boobies” means that men will be less likely to check themselves. They don’t have “boobies,” so why should they worry?

      Then you try to equate “nuts” with “boobies”, but it’s really not the same thing. First off, “boobies” is a little-kid word. I’ve never heard a college-aged person use that word to describe breasts in public unless they were joking, intentionally trying to act like a little kid, or both. It’s infantilizing. “Nuts” might be a funny word, but it doesn’t have anywhere near the same connotation. Most importantly, testicles aren’t sexualized to the same degree as breasts. When was the last time you heard someone say, “Damn, I’d really love to touch his nuts”? Historically, women have routinely been both infantilized and sexualized in Western society (to a much greater degree than men, anyway). Isn’t it time this topic was broached maturely?

      You also bring up a campaign for safer sex. A campaign for safe sex shouldn’t be desexualized—especially considering one of the main obstacles to safe sex has been the perception that it’s not “sexy” to use a condom. In the end, both campaigns promote an act that prevents against a disease, whether it’s safe sex or checking yourself for lumps. Safe sex should be sexy. Checking yourself shouldn’t have to be. The problem with the sexualization of breast cancer is that breast cancer prevention doesn’t have anything to do with sex.

      I think people are pretty aware that breast cancer is a thing already. What the campaign needs to focus on is bringing home the message that it could happen to anybody. But the most important goal should be to demonstrate the proper method of checking for lumps in a mature way, without disrespecting, infantilizing, or unnecessarily sexualizing its target audience.

      1. “the most important goal should be to demonstrate the proper method of checking for lumps”
        ^THIS

        By mentioning “boobies,” the campaign doesn’t “disrespecting, infantilizing, or unnecessarily sexualizing its target audience” – no, it gets the target audience to notice the poster, then talk about the event, and most importantly, SHOW UP. If I see a poster that says “Workshop on how to determine if you might have breast cancer,” I would probably ignore it, especially since I’m male. If that poster, however, does something to catch my attention (and I think it’s fair to say that “boobies” attract the attention of most people – male or female, gay or strait), I might end up talking about it with whoever I’m with, and at least consider attending.

        While your point that “the campaign needs to focus on is bringing home the message that it could happen to anybody,” by getting people to immediately acknowledge – and talk about – breast cancer, men may recall that they, too, are at risk for breast cancer and also should probably learn about how to “check their boobies.”

        Oh, and with respect to “women being sexualized more than men” : Ryan Gosling. Women sexualize men too.

        1. I guess we’ve just got different points of view then. Personally, if I saw this as a man, I would only consider attending either as a joke, or to try to pick up girls. I doubt I’d seriously think it applied to me. But maybe you’re a better person than I am. Agree to disagree?

          (I can’t let you off on the Ryan Gosling thing though. I know this is way beside the original point, and I know I’m going to sound very “feminazi” here but… isolated incidents aren’t comparable to centuries of institutionalized discrimination.)

  2. “Check your boobies” means exactly that– check your breasts. For breast cancer. You’d need to go out of your way to argue that the implications are damaging for breast cancer victims.

    And the Relay for Life comparison makes no sense to me. I see no possibility for “provocative” advertising for Relay for Life. Breast cancer and testicular cancer just so happens to affect areas of the body that are historically sexualized. But the benefits of spreading awareness far outweigh any possible “emotional damage” to those patients.

  3. While I disagree with just about everything you are arguing in this article, you are entitled to your opinion. However the fact that you posted this article without ever having attended one of the events that this organization puts on shows incomplete and immature journalism. Without attending the event you cannot possibly fully understand what this organization is about, or they approach the very serious topic of breast cancer. Please do yourself and Check Your Boobies the courtesy of attending the event so you can at least be fully informed.

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