Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2001 | Page 29
Breast Cancer Discourse in Cyberspace
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worries of on-line monoculturalism, capitalist colonization, and the development
of cyberspace as an “ideology-machine” that develops “routines” (Ross, 2000) normalized sets of practices and discourses that reflect commercial interests. De
spite its potential, celebrations of cyberspace as anything near utopian no longer
seem viable, and instead, cyberspace appears as a complex constellation of medi
ated texts, events and interactions that demand critical feminist attention.
In this article I closely analyze a mainstream website dedicated to breast
cancer awareness. As primary new spaces of popular culture that combine interac
tive entertainment, information, and consumption, mainstream web sites often
weave together multiple discourses and knowledges from diverse sources. The
site that I analyze here, Women.com’s “Breast Fest 2000,” is explicitly pedagogi
cal, compiling breast information from a number of sources and offering advice on
women’s overall body management, much like many others sponsored by main
stream cyber groups. In “Breast Fest,” biomedical, consumer/corporate, and femi
nist knowledges about breast cancer converge, are appropriated and are employed
to buttress each other. My focus is on how breast cancer is represented in this
popular culture site and how it is incorporated into a larger set of messages about
female embodiment. I will show how “Breast Fest” not only promotes surveil
lance, but also an overall ideal o f female embodiment underwritten with
heteronormative femininity.
Breast Fest 2000
National Breast Cancer Awareness Month was bom in 1985, the brain
child o f Imperial Chemicals Industry, which was later taken over by Zeneca Phar
maceuticals, the maker of the breast cancer drug tamoxifen. Its message promoted
early detection as the primary public health response to breast cancer. Now more
widely recognized and endorsed by women’s breast cancer advocacy groups, Breast
Cancer Awareness Month discourse still privileges surveillance technology and
early detection. Quite successful in terms of gaining attention for breast cancer, it
is now widely used as a cultural focal point for representations of breast cancer.
In October 2000, Women.com presented “Breast Fest,” a web site to cel
ebrate October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month.3“Breast Fest” provided infor
mation about a number of breast cancer resources. It advertised Dr Susan Loves
Breast Book and The Breast Cancer Survival Manual, solicited donations for the
Race for the Cure sponsored by the Susan G. Komen Foundation, provided peti
tions for legislative action concerning research funding, promoted breast cancer
conscious voting, promoted the breast self-exam and provided space for readers to
publish tributes to women who have died of the disease. It also advertised the book
The Womanly Art o f Breastfeeding, polled readers on whether “babes with bigger
boobs have the advantage”, and asked women to celebrate their breasts by writing