There’s only one reason to care about breast cancer!
And guess what, NZGirl* and others, it’s not because boobs are great!
Boobs are great.
But that’s seriously not the fucking point.
Likewise, I may very well love my partner’s cock, but the reason I will ensure he gets his prostate checked is not because I would miss his cock.** It’s because cancer is bad and can be fatal and I don’t need to justify my concern or “sell” it to anyone by proclaiming that we should Save Fellatio and Get The Boys Out For The Boys and You Shove A Finger Up There Or I Will!
Scuba Nurse has done a most excellent, hard-hitting, [trigger warning for probably NSFW images and discussion of cancer] post about the realities of breast cancer.
Bet you none of those pics make it onto NZGirl’s page of “pretty titties”.
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For bonus fail, NZGirl’s stunning strategy to stop their pages being hijacked by bullies, stalkers and vengeful exes is a simple “you must agree to our terms and conditions” button. How quaint.***
For BONUS bonus fail, the terms and conditions likewise notes:
For every 50 completed, qualifying entries of boobs submitted to the nzgirl “Our favourite: Breasts” campaign, nzgirl agrees to donate $1000 to breast cancer research up to a maximum pledge of $5000 (or 250 pairs).
Because when you’re “mobilising” people to “awareness” of breast cancer, you definitely want to assume that everyone’s breasts come in pairs.
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*Truly, never has the notion of referring to grown women as “girls” and pretending it’s playful and fun instead of infantilising been better crystallized for me.
**Or lament cock-related complications from prostate cancer.
***One can only assume no one on the NZGirl staff has ever downloaded or installed any piece of software ever.
Ideologically Impure 
Want even more epic fail? Wouldn’t you think that if their whole plan for this campaign was to ‘raise awareness’ about breast cancer and ‘raise money’ for research they would actually check with the Breast Cancer Research Foundation? Yeah, they didn’t. And then they claimed they did. And they didn’t bother properly consulting breast cancer sufferers and survivors either.
But they pinky promise that it’s not just a way to increase their brand recognition and get more traffic to their site thus directly profiting from pink-washing and exploiting breast cancer as a charity.
Honestly, how long is it going to take before people wake up to the fact that this is just a very clever marketing campaign to make sure everyone knows about NZGirl.
I guess I never underestimate the ability of people to just not think their shit through … but yeah, to claim this isn’t about marketing because “but we took all ads off the boob page!” is just playing too willfully ignorant of basic brand recognition and How The Intertubez Workz.
Oh fuck, I take it all back.
Jenene Freer, an editor at NZGirl, is director at a company called Actual Dialogue which among other things offers pay-per-click advertising tools.
The Ideologically Impure betting agency will now be taking odds on whether this counts as completely amoral self-marketing, a high-faluting “social experiment”, or a fantastic own goal.
I’m waiting with bated breath for their rectal cancer awareness pix campaign.
PAIRS?! They didn’t get the problem with writing PAIRS and then claming to give a shit about breast cancer? How fucking dumb are they?
No wait, that’s probably a rhetorical question. I’m fairly sure I know the answer.