I know you want to fight against breast cancer. You are honestly trying to help. But stop. Please, stop.

Breast cancer is a serious and terrifying illness that affects hundreds of thousands of women each year. Thanks to years of research and early detection efforts, a Stage I diagnosis of breast cancer today has an 88 percent five-year survival rate, but that is still more than 1 in 10 women that pass away from this disease. Treatment is also very invasive — 56 percent of U.S. women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer will undergo a mastectomy (removal of one or both breasts). All of these women will worry about their future, and fear for their lives and the feelings of their loved ones.

By portraying breast cancer as an illness that affects “boobies” rather than women, you are fetishizing a disease that kills. You are reducing women with lives and friends and feelings to the sum of what is on their chests. Intentionally or not, you are saying that women who survive breast cancer due to having a mastectomy are lost causes.

If you care about breast (or any kind of) cancer, I encourage you to donate to organizations that contribute to scientific research such as the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Let’s make this about saving women’s lives, not their breasts.

— Robin Betz
Junior, Muir College