Cancer awareness: We need to talk to about breasts first

Bra-talk is a personal topic. The taboos associated with the mere three-letter word are many, and ridiculous. As young girls, when we are told to switch from a Barbie-doll image imprinted vest to an elastic band bra, we’re handed over the garment in secrecy. We’re told that the garment is to be never left unattended, or the straps to be visible, for it would suggest we’re sending across wrong signals.

We walk the streets, our femininity tucked in between hooks and straps, whilst the undergarments worn by men hang on the clothesline, at railway stations, in balconies, on water storage tanks, and more. While we’re told that the good girls should hide the straps, each time they peek from the side of a tee-shirt, the men scratch and play with their private parts, brazenly. A few young men make sure the band of their under wears/boxers are visible from underneath their denims, and this gets recognised as a style statement too.

We go about our lives, not talking bras (panties/undergarments are not ignored that much, even campaigns are called Pink Chaddi, not Pink Bra!), and the world goes about ignoring the fact that woman have breasts, till we reach the month of October. (On few rare occasions, we talk, say, when a lifestyle supplement of a newspaper flaunts breasts of a woman and an online debate stirs, or when a Hollywood star leaves home sans underpants.) For most parts, women as we know are about two arms and two legs, a face, head, back and stomach.

But come tomorrow, and we will recognise that women have breasts, and they need to be spoken about, each day, each hour. We will get draped in the colour pink. It is the start of the Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and pink ribbons will pop up everywhere. Charities, candies, spa offers, and more, along with the useful information brochures, workshops will dot the geography of the country. Videos of survivors will be shared as brave tales. And more.

And at this point, one can’t help but shudder looking at the mere statistics. Breast cancer is now the most common cancer in most Indian cities, and the second most common in the rural areas. There are an estimated 1,00,000 - 1,25,000 new breast cancer cases in India every year. We are witnessing an age-shift, and the average age of developing breast cancer has shifted from 50-70 years to 30-50 years; and cancers in the young tend to be more aggressive. Roughly, in India, for every two women diagnosed with breast cancer, another is dying of it.

It is said that correct knowledge is half the war won. But in a land where in schools, the science books with the chapters titled "Parts of the Human Body" label every part, other than the woman’s "privates", how will we ever win a war? As a fifth-grader, I thought that maybe my privates don’t have or deserve a name. I had a head and toes, neck and knees, and a small and large intestine in between. And then, I thought, if my teacher didn’t know anything about the breasts, how could anyone else possibly know?

As a tenth grader, my friends who studied in co-ed schools told me that during the study of the chapter on reproductive organs, the class was divided into two batches: girls and boys, to be taught separately. Of course, the latter lead to giggles and what was called as "non-veg" jokes shared on back benches. Growing up doesn’t change things much. Except that now we face male salesman (at many small undergarment stores in our country) selling us the garment, at times remarking on the sizes and on other occassions, grinning. When it comes to getting married, the bras become a topic again, friends giggling about gifting us pieces of intimacy! A grilled toaster would have been better, you want to tell them.

All along, we know the breasts are part of us, and they don’t go ignored, even though we are made to believe they’re private, hidden. The world knows we are not roaming around vest-less – we are wearing a bra. We are elbowed by aunts to bend down with caution. A stranger at a busy railway station gropes us. Lecherous man describe a young girl’s breasts as fresh, young and juicy, an orange going on an apple, something of that sort. And more.

Yet, we don’t talk about it, till it is October or our world comes crashing. The body part that didn’t even exist so far bearing signs of cancer. The women putting up fights, the men supporting them. Many thanking gods, that it was not them.

A month later, we’re likely to go back, walk the path where we came from. I wonder if this exhaustive ignorance will ever end. Will we ever stop pretending that women have just a chest?