My bra is fire-engine red

The bra colour meme has come and gone and has created a firestorm throughout the Interwebs. For those few, sad people that don't do Facebook, this is the gist of the message that was in the inbox of assumably every female Facebook follower on the planet:

"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 colour in their status... Haha!"


Right.


There are certainly some points contained within that missive that on the surface, make this seem like a meaningless gesture—that breast cancer only affects women; that posting one's bra colour actually does anything at all to raise awareness or funds for the fight against breast cancer; that sexualizing the discussion by creating coy, titillating messages has any impact on the fight. At least, that's the opinion of Jezebel and the lock-step commentors at the site.

But what good has it really done for breast cancer awareness? Does anyone on Facebook really not know about breast cancer to the point where someone posting "purple lace!" and eight dudes responding, "Ooh, hot, lol" is really doing to anything to really help the cause in any possible way? If anything, the constant sexualization of and cutesy-poo approach to breast cancer pushes people to take it less seriously. As Tracy Clark-Flory of Broadsheet notes: "This bra color movement seems a similarly desperate attempt to get guys to simply give a crap about breast cancer by making it sexy and flirtatious, which I find not only embarrassing to women but insulting to men." Mary Carmichael of Newsweek agrees, noting: "They're not saying a word about cancer. This isn't awareness or education; it's titillation." Jules at Feminazery also agrees, adding that the campaign is "about using a disease that has a devastating impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people as a spurious justification for discussing saucy undies."

To many, the gesture isn't just meaningless and ineffective—it's also offensive and ultimately degrading to women. (As a side note, remind me to come back to the humourless feminist stereotype sometime.)

I'll admit that when I got the first of many such messages in my inbox, I ignored them for many of the reasons above. I didn't care for the game of keeping men guessing, I didn't think breast cancer was suffering from a lack of awareness and I was fully cognizant that posting the colour of my bra wouldn't have any impact on the quest for a cure.

Yet, I noticed that among many of my friends who are themselves breast cancer survivors, there seemed to be elation, gratitude and unbridled joy. One in particular was thumbs-upping every woman in her contact list that had posted pink, purple or flesh-toned as the simple update. In this regard, is posting the colour of one's lacy underthings so very far removed from shaving one's head—albeit of shorter duration? Nothing was gained in the fight, but some of those who are on the front lines sure felt a bit of support from their friends.

And support, after all, is the purpose of both the meme and the multi-coloured, underwire and sport bras. And there's not one thing wrong with that.

Photo by aschaeffer at stock.xchng