Breast Cancer Awareness: “I Like It On My Status Update”

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THIERRY ROGE / Reuters / Corbis

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and while breast cancer is most certainly a disease worthy of awareness and fund-raising, sometimes attempts at raising awareness are a little… peculiar.

Remember last year’s Facebook campaign where all of your lady friends suddenly had status updates like “Black,” “Red,” or “Polka dots” and no one had any clue what was up? Oh, but then word got around that the updates were the bra colors of choice and the updates were meant to pique interest of those left out of the joke (read: males) in order to raise awareness about breast cancer. Um, ok?

While the logic of the trend didn’t quite connect–does titillating (no pun intended) men lead to cancer awareness? Or does it just titillate men?–it did raise a lot of speculation for a few days and at least the updates were breast-related.

(See TIME.com’s Faces of Breast Cancer.)

This year’s Facebook awareness mission, however, is even more unusual.

You may have noticed several status updates in the past few days with phrases such as “I like it on the couch,” or “I like it on the floor.” These status updates aren’t referencing creative places the updater likes to, well, you know. Instead these locations are the places that the updater likes to keep their… purse.

Seriously.

But by updating their status with such a mysteriously evocative statement, women are, um, arousing attention to the breast cancer campaign. Right?

To reiterate, there is nothing wrong with campaigning for breast cancer awareness (or any disease, for that matter). In fact, quite the opposite is true–the effects of successful campaigning for the disease has led to a significant reduction in the disease. Yet what exactly does provocatively saying where you like to keep your purse have to do with a horrible disease that has challenged millions of lives?

So as well-intentioned as some of these updates might be, they seem a little misguided. My guess is that interest in breast cancer isn’t exactly what you’ll be piquing.

(See “The Changing Face of Breast Cancer” from TIME.com)