Jenice Armstrong: A breast-cancer campaign that flaunts 'em
For Breast Cancer Awareness Month, there's a new crop of PSAs that take breasts - great big ones - and shove them right in our faces. These aren't your mama's remember-to-schedule-your-mammogram ads.
A PAIR of voluptuous breasts jiggle like Jell-O as male partygoers gawk.
All eyes are on her. Even the women lounging around the pool sit up and take notice as the attractive woman in a tiny white bikini struts around with "the girls" bouncing.
What's this new TV spot advertising? Bathing suits? A new weight-loss pill? Axe Body Wash?
Nah.
It's a "Save the Boobs" campaign. Breast Cancer Awareness Month begins Thursday and there's a new crop of public-service spots that take breasts - great big ones - and shove them right in our faces. These aren't your mama's remember-to-schedule-your-mammogram announcements.
In another ad, also by RethinkBreastCancer.org, a man is shown wearing what appears to be DD-sized, breastlike appendages under a T-shirt. Not surprisingly, the guy is completely fixated on his ginormous "breasts." It's as if he's in love with them. He's shown goofily bouncing along a sidewalk and in another scene, snapping a Polaroid of his enhanced chest.
At one point, he contemplates turning a garden hose on his chest for a wet-T-shirt look. Words appear on-screen: "If men had breasts, they'd really appreciate them." It's a silly but powerful ad because the unspoken takeaway is that since men are so enthralled by mammaries, we women had better not mess around and neglect ours.
The concern, predictably, is that this new crop of commercials makes breast cancer seem less serious than it is.
Plus, they may send an objectionable message to women that if they get breast cancer, they'll no longer be the subject of male attention and desire. What's a woman going to do then?
Argh. Let's remember here that women are not their breasts. But will the ads work? The folks behind them are trying to reach a tough market - young people raised on MTV and video games who feel as if breast cancer doesn't affect them no matter how many pink-ribboned products they might run across in stores in October.
These PSAs aim to make people sit up and take notice, and they must cut through a landscape littered with millions of competing images vying for our attention.
Why not link a gorgeous, busty woman in an itsy-bitsy bikini with breast cancer? It will alarm some folks. And if that's what it takes to get men to remind their partners to schedule a mammogram or help them be supportive if she finds a lump, then so be it.
Go ahead, refer to women's breasts as ta-tas, gazongas, hooters, chee-chees or whatever like the women do in that Yoplait breast-cancer spot.
Or like the baseball-centered campaign "Save Second Base" stretched across a T-shirt. How we get the message across doesn't matter. It's a good thing when commercials remind us how silly men can act at the sight of a beautiful pair of breasts.
And if it jars some young woman into getting her first mammogram, then this commercial's creator isn't such a boob after all.
Send e-mail to heyjen@phillynews.com. My blog: http://go.philly.com/heyjen.