Breast Cancer Awareness Sexualized? (is that bad?)

Here are screen grabs from the most recent articles I found online about breast cancer stuff (it’s a common topic, which is a good thing). Check them out (especially the first and last, which I find the most weird; I mean, does that first lady have silver gloves on, or something?)

from WIRED and about cancer in general instead of just breast cancer but I think the same ideas apply

These kinds of photos in media that are purportedly about breast cancer awareness have raised questions in my mind for a long time. Years.

1. These look kinda like sexualized (even titillating) representations of female breasts. Am I wrong? Is my Y-chromosome just seeing sexualization where it doesn’t exist? But seriously, come on. All the women are model-shaped, model-groomed (where heads are visible), with flawless skin and model-sized breasts. The poses sometimes seem a bit, um, languid? And the lighting is soft, with lighting techniques common from portrait and budoir photography (especially the bright-light backlit one).
2. Maybe I just think they’re sexualized, because they’re pictures that focus on breasts? I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a product of my breast-obsessed culture. Most of the photos obviously focus on the models’ bodies, sometimes even cutting out their faces entirely, which is a red flag for sexualization or even pornification of images. But it’s breast cancer. It’s about breasts. It is appropriate that the photos focus on breasts, right? My head asplode.
3. In the last photo, why did Wired think it was important to make it look like this woman had been spray-painted with mercury? And does this photo imply that Wired is only worried about female breast and butt cancer? Discuss.

Final item: if there is an aspect of sexualization of these photos, is that a bad thing? If sex sells computers and cars, why not use it to get donations to breast cancer research and treatment? This premise implies that at least some donations will be tied to breast-sexualization, an idea many feminists would abhor, but a world in which everybody does the right things for the right reasons may not be realistic. Maybe the choice is between (a) less-sexualized visual representations (or none at all), resulting in less money and more dead women, or (b) more donations and fewer dead women because a certain number of people are thinking, “Save the beautiful, beautiful boobies!”¹

If the above choice reflects our reality, then courting only donations offered with pure intentions might be seen as prideful grandstanding at the expense of dying women. But it might also make other problems worse, in the long run (you know, all that stuff they teach you in skool: gender relations, misogyny, objectification, abuse, etc).

On the other other hand, imagine public awareness slogans like “Without a cure for ovarian cancer, you will get less sex,” or “Melanoma makes the people you have to look at uglier,” with no reference to the suffering of victims in the marketing. Even if those things boosted donations and research², that’s not a cost-benefit ratio I would want to calculate. But I suspect a little of that is happening with breast cancer research. Maybe it’s akin to the way we are happier to save the dolphins and pandas than the invertebrates and fungi.

1. In some cases, the boobies of the potential donors; in other cases, those of the donors’ wives, girlfriends, or pinup models [↩]
2. I really hope they wouldn’t; I’m not quite that cynical [↩]