Pink-to-ber n A portmanteau coinage used by many people who live with breast cancer to refer to October, the Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is heavily dominated by marketing in the color pink and cute tags like “Save the tatas”. (See Komen, etc.)
During the month of October 2013, I am running guest posts from people with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) or who are closely involved with someone who has MBC. This was the idea of the wonderful Jody Schoger, and I think some other breast cancer bloggers are participating, too.
Today’s post is exceptional in a couple of ways. First of all, it’s just exceptional. It is a superb response to my candidate for this year’s Biggest Idiocy in Pink award. It is exceptional in the strict sense because Feisty Blue Gecko does not, thank God, have metastatic breast cancer. However, I am including it in this series as an exception because of the first reason. I’m sorry if I just made you dizzy. Please don’t forget to check out Feisty Blue Gecko’s blog, and let’s give her some comment love here. Now, over to FBG:
. . .
It takes quite a lot to rev my temper engine, but this is beyond my comprehension. Offensive, insensitive to the extreme and in my view, utterly useless.
These are just a few reasons that this has incensed me:
- October 13th is the sole day dedicated to Metastatic Breast Cancer, in itself woefully inadequate.
- Many women have had surgery which means that not wearing a bra is in the least extremely uncomfortable.
- Many of us are trying to hide the fact that our surgery brings significant asymmetry – not wearing a bra would be excruciatingly embarrassing.
- Most surgery for breast cancer brings at best pain and at worst restriction in range of movement. Waving your arms in the air (as in the image above) is another indication of how far removed this is from reality.
- What about men?????