Maybe Don’t Bother With #NoBraDay

Keep your bra on
Keep your bra on Photo: Olivier Cadeaux/Corbis

Around the social web today, you’ll find the hashtag #NoBraDay clogging up your Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook feeds as a proposed way of bringing awareness to breast cancer. While many of us go without bras every day, this specific “cause” asks women to share photos of themselves with boobs unsheathed. Every boob has the potential to contract breast cancer, right? The hashtag alleges that putting boobs out in the open will be an ample reminder of the fact.

But there are plenty of other ways to draw attention to breast cancer that aren’t so slacktivist as not wearing a bra and tweeting about it. The notion that no one will pay attention to the perils of breast cancer unless women show their boobs is a leftover dictum of the male-dominated world, and it largely draws attention away from the real humans who suffer from the disease, humans who are much more than just boobs. The scintillating outline of an areola isn’t so powerful as to inspire that big of a change, so it’s probably best to keep your bra on.

Unless you’re already braless for other reasons. In which case — fly on, sister.

Maybe Don’t Bother With #NoBraDay