Why I Had To #BeMoreFrench To Write About BREAST CANCER AWARENESS

This post (and anything I write relating to Breast Cancer Awareness this year) is a #Sponsored Post and an #Ad according to Advertising Standards. 

This is the first year that I have chosen to create content in support of Breast Cancer Awareness month a.k.a. Pink October. There is one reason why until now, I have not felt able to tackle this subject – FEAR.

I have always worried that my characteristic flippancy could cause anger or distress when writing about a subject as serious as Breast Cancer. Also, I’ve now grown old enough that I’m part of the cohort advised to have regular mammograms. But whilst I’m pro-vaccination, and conscientious about taking smear tests as directed, the mammogram is a procedure that I have always felt ambivalent about – and so I haven’t had one yet.

But I do think about Breast Cancer, and I certainly want to see efforts made to understand, fight and treat this illness, so ignoring the opportunity to write about it – particularly during Pink October, the month of Breast Cancer Awareness – felt increasingly wrong.

In the first week of October I received an email from French beauty company BY TERRY, who  were raising awareness of France’s ‘pink ribbon’ organisation: Ruban Rose. 

Regular readers will know that I have a longstanding fascination with French Culture and like to find a way to #BeMoreFrench every day. 

I realised that the ‘Pink Ribbon’ logo  meant that Ruban Rose is the French equivalent of the Pink Ribbon campaign that runs in the UK.

I am uncomfortable with charity as it operates in the UK. I see it as all too often bridging gaps in provision that should be the responsibility of government. For this reason I have tended to shy away from promoting charitable initiatives – even the ones that  I consider to be doing good work  – because there are so many UK charities that are compensating for inequality and  governmental inadequacy.

Because I don’t see the French Ruban Rose initiative operating in a political climate happy to let individuals make sacrifices to protect the most vulnerable from governmental indifference, this felt like a pink ribbon that I could wear and discuss without feeling like a hypocrite. (If you are thinking “That is the most dreadful justification for French-Walting that I’ve ever heard”, I hear you – I was saying that to myself, too.)

Every year, I receive a lot of email about “Pink October” – but this is the first I’ve responded to. With the little bit of emotional distance afforded me by writing about ‘Ruban Rose’ rather than ‘Pink Ribbon’, I hoped:

• to be brave enough to admit that ridiculously, and to my embarrassment,  I have yet to book a mammogram –  one of the few preventative examinations that is offered in the UK? And that I’ve deferred my appointment, despite having moaned for decades that we don’t do routine physical check-ups in the NHS (as happens in France), but instead have a culture of ‘don’t bother the doctor’ until you’re really sick. That’s some level of  intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy on my part!

• to be brave enough to admit to having had no knowledge of 50% of my genetic history (and thus no full knowledge of my familial risk of breast cancer) until this summer, and that I’m now reluctant to discover what illnesses run in my biological father’s family?

• to be brave enough to admit that I have political issues with charities in the UK? Many British people view charity as inherently apolitical, and can be shocked and angered at any questioning or criticism of organised giving. I’m comfortable with charities if they are working to provide more of a good thing – research into breast cancer, for example –  but only when that is happening within a state that is keeping its end up in providing a decent standard of living for all of the population. France seems to me to be in this position, but I don’t believe that the same can currently be said for the UK with its extreme wealth divide, active pursuit of austerity, and three million people (including me) given no financial support throughout the pandemic.
•  

One of my tactics when facing the unnerving prospect of doing something that scares me is to find a different  thing that I’m afraid of, and to do that scary thing instead. This  Procrastination puts off doing the Big Scary Thing, but it’s also a very good way to give yourself a little adrenalin rush, which just might catapult you into doing the Big Scary Thing. And if the Smaller Scary Thing works out in a way that’s pleasing, the subsequent Dopamine hit makes it even easier to tackle the Big Scary Thing.

So, in creating content to promote Ruban Rose and Pink October, I needed a personal challenge. I was very, very busy with Jeans Week! and I didn’t have to think for more than a moment before realising that I could create some content inspired by one of the most memorable images of ‘someone in jeans’ that I’ve ever seen, whilst also living up to the #BeMoreFrench hashtag and facing the fear of making an absolute idiot of myself by … posing for my first ever  topless photo at the tender age of 53.

I pulled up images of Tony Frank’s ‘Melody Nelson’ photos, and set about trying to recreate Jane Birkin as Melody Nelson, armed with

• an old pair of Gap 1969 jeans
• a bedspread that the cats like to sleep on
• Jacko: my childhood monkey

This was the result of my efforts, and I ended up feeling very happy with it. More importantly, creating this content led to me retrieving all the paperwork required to re-book that postponed mammogram, and enter the task of thinking about it calmly and logically into my digital planner.

Does this mean I’m not anxious about the mammogram any more? No! I remain irrationally worried that I’ve jinxed myself by putting the damn thing off in the first place, instinctively ambivalent about the process (it makes me uneasy that it involves so much literal pressure), and cross with myself that I’m conflicted and indecisive about this screening. 

If I hadn’t received that timely email from By Terry, I’d still be feeling all those unpleasant emotions, but I wouldn’t have faced my fears of a) public (semi)-nudity, b) having my picture taken, c) writing truthfully about my own breast cancer awareness (or lack of).

Having tackled fears a), b), and c) in this post, and (no pun intended) got my doubts, contradictions and all-round muddled impulses off my chest, I hope to now find the space and clarity to read through all the literature from the screening clinic, and make an informed decision, rather then push the whole subject away as something that “I don’t have time to think about right now.”

So thank you By Terry and thank you Ruban Rose.

I have lots of women friends who have handled the rite of passage that is a first mammogram calmly and with intelligence. I also have friends who have faced a diagnosis of breast cancer with courage and humour and resilience, and without losing an ounce of their essential selves to this disease, even when undergoing treatment and sometimes mastectomy. And then there’s me … I might be unique in my friendship circle in having been evasive and avoidant in my response to Breast Cancer Awareness, but I don’t suppose I’m alone in the world in responding in this way.

So I’ve written this post for everyone else like me, who might have been kicking themselves for their reluctant indecisiveness, delaying the screening, and then feeling guilty about it. Guilt is exhausting, depressing and distracting. Between guilt and fear, there’s not much to choose from, is there? If you’re feeling either of these horrible emotions during Pink October, I hope this post will have distracted you a little, and maybe allowed you to move past either or both of these two states and towards a form of action that will be helpful to you.