Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2001 | Page 29

Breast Cancer Discourse in Cyberspace 25 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