Last weekend, countless women announced their bra colors on Facebook in an attempt to raise cancer awareness. Here?s why I didn?t join
THE ACTION STARTED ON Saturday morning. I woke up, logged into Facebook and received a message from a friend in New York which she sent to about twenty other friends. ?Write the color of your bra as your status, just the color, nothing else! Copy this and pass it on to all females ? NO MEN! It will be fun to see how it spreads ? Let?s have fun! And?as you do this?keep all the women who have breast cancer in your prayers.?

The message expressed how fun it would be to keep the men wondering why all the girls have colors as their status message.

?Eh,? I thought, moving on to the next message.

But soon it became obvious that not everyone felt like I did.

Zebra stripes

?Pink!?

?Black : )?

?Red and black?

?White?

?Blue?

?Hot Pink ;)?

?Brown?

My Facebook wall soon became alive with the colors of the brainbow. My friends were clearly having fun, punctuating their bra colors with exclamation points, smileys and winking smileys.

While the colors became more and more interesting, I still didn?t feel like participating. It was fun to watch though.

?Black and white stripes?

?Cherub pink?

?Black with golden brown lace?

?White with pink polka dots?

?Purple ? with silver studs.?

The color status fever caught on, with friends from all corners of the world sharing the shades of their underwear.

The men soon caught on and figured out what the colors meant, leading Jed, one of my Facebook friends, to post: ?So the color status messages are a means to raise awareness of breast cancer, by having girls name the colors of their bras. Therefore, I propose an awareness scheme over Facebook to combat the life-threatening effects of prostate cancer. Gentlemen! Name your brief colors! White.?

Soon, my Facebook wall was once again full of colors?this time not of bras but of boxers and briefs. There was even one with zebra stripes. Fantastic.

A lot of attention

Unsurprisingly, Facebook?s bra brigade received a lot of attention.

ABC News wrote, ?In the last 24 hours, women have randomly been posting the color of their bras on their status updates, bewildering their friends and titillating the men in their lives?all to raise awareness for breast cancer research.?

The same article quoted Andrea Rader, a spokesperson for Susan G. Komen For the Cure, an organization that raises funds for breast cancer research. ?We think it?s terrific. It?s a terrific example of how little things get started on the Internet and go a long way to raise cancer awareness.?

But not everyone was impressed.

In an article called ?Thanks for Sharing, But Your Bra Color Isn?t Going To Cure Cancer,? Hortense from Jezebel.com wrote, ?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.?

The article quotes Mary Carmichael of Newsweek who wrote, ?They?re not saying a word about cancer. This isn?t awareness or education; it?s titillation.?

The Jezebel.com article received a lot of reactions.

Divided

?It bothered me because it let people feel like they were doing something to make a positive impact without really doing anything at all,? Whynotshesaid posted.

Kayleigh Rae wrote, ?Facebook posts are something younger generations relate to. Why not use this to our advantage? I read a post about how a woman?s 17 year old sister started asking her questions about when she should get her first mammogram?a topic they never would have discussed without the prompt from Facebook.?

Bohogurl posted, ?I normally never participate in these kinds of Facebook games but I did this one not because I thought it would advance the cause of breast cancer awareness. I did because it gave me a fun, playful sense of solidarity with my women friends that perked up (no pun intended) a boring day at work. We have breasts, we wear bras, we are sisters.?

?Here?s my thought: will posting your bra color cure cancer? No. But?since this game began, it has had a far reaching effect. Numerous people, have taken to writing and blogging about it. I have read many informative blog posts written about this game in the last two days. Some of these posts have included valuable information for woman regarding breast cancer?and these posts only happened because of this game. Now?maybe it won?t make a huge difference but in my opinion, having been touched by cancer in my own life, if one woman reads just one of these posts and decides to go get a mammogram, the game has been a massive success,? wrote Crystal Unrau

Even Facebook users were divided.

Creepy

The ?Breast Cancer Awareness <3 I updated my Status with my Bra Colour? page has over 75,000 fans on Facebook. Another Facebook page, Bra Color As My Status, has over 2000. But the status inviting women to post a picture of themselves wearing their bras for a shot at winning a $10 Amazon gift certificate was pretty strange. ?That?s creepy!? one person wrote on the page.

The page, ?Not telling everyone the color of my bra in my status,? has 656 fans. ?Not Posting the Color of Your Bra? page has 804 fans and a lot of information on breast cancer, including links to breast cancer websites. The page reads, ?The purpose of this group isn?t to bash people who are posting colors as their status. The purpose is to promote better and more effective ways of raising awareness, as well as encouraging people to donate their time and funds to various cancer societies around the world.?

But was cancer awareness really the point of the game? Some Facebook users claim to have received early versions of the message encouraging them to post their bra colors with no mention of cancer at all.

The message I received did mention cancer, but it seemed to be only as an afterthought. There was more focus on how silly and fun the game would be.

Whether the plan was really to raise cancer awareness is something we might never know. No one has been able to trace the origin of the bra brigade.

Not over

I didn?t participate in the game because I didn?t feel like it. I do care about cancer?I lost an aunt who was very close to me to breast cancer when I was 15 and I still miss her every day. I just didn?t think posting my bra color was going to make a difference.

I have nothing again the many women on my Facebook contact list who posted their bra colors. I believe there were two kinds of them?those who thought they really were making an effort to raise awareness and those who did it because they thought it was fun. And who can blame them? It was fun. Even I enjoyed watching the men on their lists react to the mysterious posts.

Sure, the bra brigade didn?t bring us one stop closer to the cure. But neither does writing and ranting about it.

The bra brigade is over. It?s time to move on. At least that?s what I thought.

Because today, I received another message on Facebook, forwarded from people trying to jumpstart another Facebook game.

?Since some females spilled the beans, we created a new one to keep others guessing. This will get the guys thinking and we?ll know who have the dirty minds or not! It?s not at all rude LOL. This is about how you are wearing your hair at this very second. Write ON TOP if you have it up, SIDE BY SIDE if down, and if messy, write EVERYWHERE & MESSY! Do not reveal this to the guys! Forward this ONLY TO WOMEN. This is in support of CANCER because so many victims lose their hair in the battle against it.?

Oh. No.