Blue is the colour of my true love's....Bra?

Friday, January 8. 2010

Blue is the colour of my true love's....Bra?

Great Rack in classic black - shows under (and over and side ) wiring. (Photo courtesy Server Rack FAQ)

Yes, on Facebook this week women have been updating their statuses (statii?) with the colours of their bras. Why? Mumsnetters were nonplussed (It is to spread the awareness of breast cancer, apparently. Darned if I know how, but its a viral meme don't y'know). Mashable played it straight. The npr blog questioned its benefits:

Is this another example of "slacktivism," virtual activism with no real results?

How many of you were inspired to educate yourselves?

How many of you changed your Facebook status, but weren't enticed to learn more about breast cancer?

How many of you decided to opt out, because you didn't want your friends and family to know the color of your undergarments?

We've also questioned the "weak tells" that something like this, or changing a colour on your Twitter picture really signifies about any real commitment. If you really care about Breast Cancer, there is only one useful colour - green (of your money). I could also write all sorts of deep and meaningful stuff about wanting to be taken seriously, the Ladette culture, the Fall of the West, gender hypocrisy and all that, but then you'd realise this article is just linkbait. I must say I'm torn between the wish for both more and less information, sadly there is no way to sort the false negatives (we'll leave the falsies out of this) - ie no bra worn - from the non answers.

I have an uncomfortable feeling that if men did the same sort of thing on a social media platform they would be widely excoriated. But hey, maybe next week its Awareness of Prostate Cancer week, what jolly thing can we disclose about that?

I also hypothesize that by this time next week someone will have done all sorts of mashups linkinging the colour with star sign, personality type, relationship status, location (thats very hot at the moment).

Anyway, its an excuse for us to show a picture of a great rack, so here it is

Posted by Alan Patrick in Online Advertising at 19:36 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

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I vote for slacktivism (being generous) and ex-post slacktivism by the looks of how things were. I found about the meme from a Mashable link and may be, I hang out with women who are too boring but there was no mention of colours in my stream and some women were distinctly irritated by the meme ('too much information', 'useless for cancer awareness' were two remarks). I don't think an analogous exercise in revelation by men to promote the awareness of prostrate cancer will go down as well. I don't see any puns emerging either (e.g. see #umbra) nor cheap titillation being obtained by either gender. From a research perspective, no conclusions can be drawn from the "data". Like NHANES telephonic interviews asking respondents to report their weight, there would be inaccuracies in the data reported. And there is no way to verify anything either and variations will be seen in data if they were to be collected on a different day. In other words - apart from blog fodder and Twitter jokes - the whole thing was pointless. No pun intended there.

#1 Shefaly (Homepage) on 2010-01-08 23:02 (Reply)

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