What
the hell is all this #nomakeupselfie thing about? I was nominated in
a Facebook post to take a photo of myself without any make up on and
plaster it all over social media to help raise awareness of cancer,
although, how exactly this will help to beat cancer was beyond me?
Having
recently lost someone very close to me to cancer, I am all for active
promotion of cancer awareness and fund-raising initiatives, but I
failed to see how this social media trend would help to make a
difference. Looking through my FB feed there was image after image,
but very few of them at the time contained any information on how to
donate, or any knowledge of how doing this will actually help to
raise cancer awareness in a positive light.
Before
taking a snap and adding myself to the #nomakeupselfie
#cancerawareness trend, I wanted to check the background. Where had
this come from and in aid of what exactly?
WHERE'D
IT START?
The
idea of the 'selfless selfie' was capitalised on by act!onaid. The
idea was to buy a t-shirt, the funds of which went towards the
Typhoon Appeal, then take a selfie while wearing your charity
t-shirt. Escensual.com beauty retailer also launched a selfiecampaign back in September 2013 to help raise money for Breast Cancer
Care. This seems to be the most similar campaign so far to the trend
we've seen in the last few days. Elsewhere, it's reported that the
viral trend began when author Laura Lippman posted a photo of herself
without make up as a way to support actress Kim Novak, who was
slammed in the press for how she looked at the Oscars.
There
has also been the launch of a new app this week, Put Yourself In The Picture, by Jo's Cervical
Cancer Trust - the only dedicated cervical cancer charity in the UK - encouraging women to take a selfie with their reminder
to go for a cervical cancer test. The app has been launched following new research* which looked at the reasons why women in the first (25-29 years) and last (60-64 years) screening ages had delayed or not been for their cervical screening. Thirty percent said that a friend reassuring them about the procedure would encourage them to attend.
I get this, more than I initially understood the social media selfie trend.
Like
with most internet virals, it's hard to pin point where it began. I
did double check with Cancer Research UK (CRUK) press office,
thinking Perhaps this was something they started? Carolan
Davidge, director of communications at Cancer Research UK told me:
“The #nomakeupselfie Twitter trend isn’t something Cancer
Research UK started – but it’s great to see so many people
getting involved to help raise awareness of cancer amongst their
friends and family. If people would like to choose to support our
work to beat cancer sooner, they can visit www.cruk.org.”
Please
note the last bit about where to go to donate, because the odd thing
with the current trend is that people were forgetting to actually do
anything. It became, for some, an exercise in narcissism: taking a
photo without make up and posting it and putting the correct hash
tags doesn't mean you've done your bit for charity. You've aided
nothing. Added nothing. It's just a picture and a comment that (well
done you), you know cancer exists. Text a donation, go out and buy a
Marie Curie daffodil; buy a pink ribbon; donate some clothes to your
local Cancer Research Shop or hospice; donate some money to the
cancer ward at your local hospital, because that's when it starts to
make a difference.
HAS
IT ACTUALLY HELPED?
Luckily,
in the last 12 hours and since I've started writing this blog, many
people realised the flaw in the plan and (finally) started to post
details on where and how to donate to various cancer charities –
the most popular being CRUK. Many cancer charities aimed to
capitalise on this awareness viral too and began to promote all the
ways and means people can actively donate. Soon, selfies were
appearing with people adding in a snap of their text confirmation to
show they'd donated.
The
latest update I have received from CRUK says, “Thanks to people
choosing to donate to us as part of the #nomakeupselfie trend, we’ve
been overwhelmed with donations and support in the past 48 hours.
We’ve raised over £2m so far, and the #nomakeupselfie is still
going strong! If people would like to choose to support our work to
beat cancer sooner, they can text BEAT to 70099 to donate £3 or
visit www.cruk.org.”
SO,
WHAT'S MY PROBLEM?
Although
the money raised is staggeringly amazing, there is one particular
aspect about this whole thing that really grinds with
me: the use of the word “brave”, the wider issue of how much
attention is created when a woman publicly appears without wearing
any make up and then the crude link of associating it with 'cancer
awareness'.
It's
a sad sign of the times when women after posting a photo of
themselves sans slap were being told how “brave” they are. I
couldn't agree with this more if we were having a conversation about
the societal conditioning of women and what is 'expected' of them in
terms of appearance. It's crap that it's surprising, 'not normal', or
brave to see a woman without foundation and blusher. But that's not
the debate we're having. We're discussing cancer and I believe the
word “brave” means a lot more than the choice of whether or not
to forgo wearing make up for a single picture.
Some
context of what brave and cancer means: brave are the patients that
have to undergo painful treatment, sometimes trying new, mostly
untested drugs; brave is finding the words to explain to your loved
ones that you might have less than a year to live; brave is the word
to use to describe those carers that do all they can to make sure the
person suffering from cancer is as comfortable as they can be,
despite how painful it is for them to watch a loved one slip away.
One
friend I was discussing this issue with summed it up well: “To
me, 'bravery' or looking like yourself, vs what someone with cancer
goes through is staggeringly offensive comparison.”
Like I said, I'm all for raising awareness and the promotion of
fund-raising initiatives, but why in this way? Why when cancer is
such a degenerative disease that strips away and changes the
appearance of someone, sometimes to the point where they no longer
look like the person you know, did this have to run?
Think
I'm being over sensitive? Please take a minute (literally) to watch
the following video: a series of selfies taken by EmilyHelck who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012 and took a photo
each week for a year while undergoing treatment. This is why I will
not be posting, because my face without make up is not a big deal.
* Research conducted by Censuswide, with 2,021 women aged 25-29 and 60-64 during 6th-12th December 2013. Surveys were conducted from a random sample of a representative panel across the country. Censuswide employs members of the Market Research Society and abides by its code and rules.
