“Not wearing a bra does not save lives.”
Fox News
No current research directly links wearing a bra to a higher breast cancer risk.
According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), about 232,670 women and 2,360 men have been diagnosed with breast cancer and about 40,000 women and 430 men have died of the disease in 2014, so far. Based on 2009-2011 data, about 12.3 percent of women will get breast cancer at some point in their lifetime.
Men and women with breast cancer have an 89.2 percent survival rate five years after being diagnosed, according to the NCI.
Thanks to better screening practices and the development of new treatments, breast cancer death rates have fallen by an average 1.9 percent each year over 2002 to 2011.
“No Bra Day” is apparently a thing.
The unofficial “holiday” is more of a social media campaign, timed this year to occur during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Women are encouraged to go braless and post photos using the hashtag #NoBraDay.
The origins of this “fauxliday,” a term dubbed by Slate’s Christina Cauterucci, remain a mystery. The group’s supposed Facebook page indicates that the movement was born in 2012, but it’s unclear why exactly the campaign was launched or what it aims to do. Based on tweets, it seems to exist in the U.S., the U.K. and France.
“Women are magnificent creatures, and so are their breasts,” reads a description on the campaign’s Facebook event. “Let us spend the day unleashing boobies from their boobie zoos.”
Unsurprisingly, not everyone is on board with No Bra Day. The hashtag has incited some serious backlash on Twitter, with both women and men claiming that it only sexualizes women’s bodies while simultaneously belittling a serious disease.
And many have questioned whether going without a bra actually helps the cause of breast cancer awareness at all.
As Cauterucci wrote: “Encouraging women to show off their bra-less chests in the name of awareness won’t save anyone, but its message to breast-cancer patients and survivors is clear: Your disease is about your secondary sex characteristics, not about you.”
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