You are not your breasts

Every year at Princeton University, the student group Princeton Against Cancer Together (PACT) holds an event called Manicure for the Cure, where they bring in beauty school students to do manicures for Princeton students in the days leading up to spring formals. Formals are this weekend, so advertisements for Manicure for the Cure are all over campus.

To advertise, they're using the slogan "Save Second Base." The phrase "second base," in case you don't know, refers to foreplay involving breasts, as in "I kissed Jenny under the bleachers and made it to second base." "How far did you let him go, Jenny? To second base?" If it sounds antiquated and ridiculous... that's because it is.

Anyway, "Save Second Base" is a slogan that's used nationwide by breast cancer research fundraisers. And it rubs a lot of people the wrong way. After all, curing breast cancer isn't really about saving breasts, it's about saving women's lives. So it annoys people, but there was no reaction on campus when Manicure for the Cure they used the slogan last year. I think people mostly made their peace with the slogan, figuring that at least it was raising money for a good cause.

But this year is different. This year, the organizers of the event, in an attempt to include men, are offering massages in addition to manicures. To advertise these services, they made posters that said: "Gentlemen: Save Second Base."

And that is when the proverbial poop hit the fan.

We woke up yesterday morning to find that an anonymous feminist had created a counter-campaign, with slogans like "Ladies: Save the Male G-Spot - support prostate cancer research," "Save Tittyfucking" - the first of which was designed to point out the sexism inherent in using sex to sell research for women's health, when prostate cancer is considered an important cause in and of itself, and the second designed to demonstrate the logical extension of urging men to donate to research in order ensure that breasts would still be available for their sexual use. And there were more serious slogans: "Does your women's organization objectify women?" "I don't need your manicures to save my mother's knockers," "Second base is not the goal: women, love your mind, body and soul." The posters had been plastered, in a kind of quilt formation, all over the huge noticeboards outside the campus student centre, around the original posters, which only served to enhance their effect.

The organizers of the event are steamed, and are accusing those who object to the original posters of a number of things. We don't care about women, we don't care about curing breast cancer, we want women to die of breast cancer, we can't take a joke and see the humour in the original slogan and so on. They're calling us angry feminists, humourless feminists - pretty predictable stuff, really, and not particularly valid, given the spot-on, rather amusing irony of the counter-campaign.

The people heading up the campaign have defended their use of the slogan in a couple of ways, the most notable of which is that it was coined by a breast cancer survivor. This gives the slogan a little more legitimacy, but also doesn't take into account that what's funny and acceptable to one cancer survivor might be offensive and supremely un-funny to another, especially when that slogan reduces women's lives to their breasts, which, sadly, many cancer survivors have had removed. Also, the fact that it was created by a woman doesn’t mean it’s not sexist.

I'm happy to report that Equal Writes, the campus feminist blog I started last year, had nothing to do with this - happy because it's good to know that there are other feminists on this campus who are speaking out about sexism and objectification of women's bodies. The more feminist voices, the better. While I had nothing to do with the counter-campaign, I do have a number of objections to the "Save Second Base" campaign. From talking to other women and men on campus, the main objections are as follow.

1) Women are not their breasts. Presenting breast cancer research as an effort to save women's breasts, rather than their lives, reduces women to their mammary glands. Like I mentioned above, this becomes particularly problematic for women who have survived breast cancer by having one or both breasts removed.

A mosaic made of 32, 000 Barbie Dolls, by artist Chris Jordan.

2) Selling sex to men and health to women. The most offensive posters specifically encouraged “gentlemen” to save “second base” (which could be interpreted as either breasts, or sexual contact involving breasts). The posters targeting women, on the other hand, focused on the health and prevention angle of breast cancer research. Apart from being heteronormative, using sex to sell only to men totally ignores the fact that women also enjoy the experience of “second base.” There’s no reason that sex couldn’t have been used to sell to women, too. The failure to take into account that fact that women also enjoy foreplay involving breasts (be they their own, or another woman’s) plays into and reinforces outdated views about men wanting sex all the time and women never wanting it.

Furthermore, while women are more likely to care about women’s health than men are, surely the health angle is one that could effectively sell breast cancer research to men. Surely we underestimate men if we believe that the only way to get them to care about women’s health is by striking into their hearts the fear of a dwindling supply of boobies. If we’re going to use sex to sell a cause (that’s an “if” for another day), then we should do so equally for male audiences and female audiences, just as if we’re going to sell this cause from a women’s health perspective, we should do so equally with male and female audiences.

3) Breast cancer is simply cancer that happens to attack the breasts. The brilliance of the “Ladies, save the male G-spot” poster is that it points out the huge difference between how we think about prostate cancer and how the “Save Second Base” campaign would have us think about breast cancer. We care about prostate cancer because it’s cancer, and it’s deadly, not because it attacks the male sexual organs. We care about men’s lives, and no one’s trying to sell prostate cancer research by warning women and gay men that prostate cancer will make certain sexual acts impossible. Breast cancer, which attacks a highly sexualized part of a woman’s body, is also life-threatening. We should care about it because it claims women’s lives, not because it claims their breasts.

I want to stress that I think that raising money for breast cancer research is incredibly important. I think the goal of this campaign is an admirable one, and one that both men and women should support. Some have suggested that the correct way to respond to the Manicure for the Cure advertising is to boycott the event, but I don’t think that’s productive. Instead, the counter-campaign posters sent a strong message that objectifying women, even if it’s for a good cause, is unacceptable, and the message, it seems, has been received. But a good cause is a good cause, and we shouldn’t miss this opportunity to raise money for something that impacts the lives of so many men and women.

As I write this, the people responsible for each of the respective campaigns are working out a compromise and are drafting a joint statement that anticipates dialogue between those who were offended by the “Save Second Base” campaign and those who supported it. Ultimately, I think this dialogue will not be about breast cancer, but about feminism. And there are important questions to ask: is it ever acceptable to objectify women? Does the campaign really even objectify women? What does it mean to care about women? Can jokes like “Save Second Base” be funny, even to feminists?

And most importantly, since it’s no longer 1962, and since baseball is quite possibly the least sexy sport in the world, can we please finally stop referring to touching a woman’s breasts as “Second Base”?