October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Women’s health organizations invariably mark it with PSAs urging women to check for any sign of this disease. They also launch fundraising drives to fund research and increase breast cancer awareness.
Breast cancer and the Angelina effect
But there’s a discordant note in the chorus of advocacy this year. And it’s coming from no less an advocate than Angelina Jolie.
It stems from her putatively heroic decision to replace her healthy breasts. Not because they were cancerous, mind you, but because she feared they might become so. And she derived that fear from being diagnosed with a genetic predisposition for breast cancer (aka the BRCA gene).
That triggered a domino effect. Thousands of women diagnosed with a similar disposition began replacing healthy breasts.
While many have praised Angelina’s brave message, there has also been criticism that the ‘Jolie Effect’ has led to unnecessary and dramatic treatment.
(Interdisciplinary Journal of Health Sciences, April 13, 2015)
Let’s hail real breast cancer survivors
I was among those venting criticism. Not because I disapproved of Jolie and other women undergoing this dramatic treatment, mind you, but because I felt Jolie was stealing praise from truly heroic women.
They, of course, are the women like Hannah Foxley. Women who have double mastectomy – not out of fear of breast cancer but out of concern that the cancer already detected might spread.
Moreover, they chose to remain flat-chested, naturally. That is, instead of having breast implants to look voluptuous, artificially. I hailed these women in “Forget Angelina! Hannah’s the Breast Cancer Survivor Worthy of Praise” on January 31, 2014.