Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2001 | Page 33

Breast Cancer Discourse in Cyberspace

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Even though early detection discourse has undoubtedly shown some ma
jor benefits, the hyperindividualism and technophilia embedded in much breast
cancer prevention discourse are not unproblematic from a feminist perspective.
The demand to take on technological vigilance as a part of self-care can have the
effect of subjugating women’s own embodied knowledges and buttressing the domi
nance of biomedical and technological “expert” discourses. Jennifer Fosket has
described, following Dorothy Smith, the bifurcation of consciousness that results
from women negotiating between biomedical and their own everyday discourses
of the body in relation to breast cancer. Fosket’s study points to some of the social
and personal implications of the surveillance messages, which are seen by some
women with breast cancer as “shifting the responsibility for detection away from
biomedicine and onto women themselves — a process that leads to blaming women
for their own disease” (2000: 31). As two of her respondents have it:
I knew about breast self-exam and mammograms and that those
were good things to do. But, you know, you really don’t realize
the implications of what it means when you get bombarded
constantly about the need to do breast self-exams and the need
to do m am m ogram s...one o f which is it gives a false
impression....It doesn’t prevent you from getting breast can
cer.
It basically puts the onus on women to detect their cancer.. .and
it basically implies...[if] you have breast cancer and it’s ad
vanced then it’s basically your fault, (both cited in Fosket 2000:
31)
The “bombardment” of messages about breast cancer is clearly powerful.
The sense of failure put upon women who do get breast cancer (and of fear upon
healthy women) is no doubt encouraged by the discourse of women’s risk profiles
and the depiction of the female (middle-class) body as constantly in need of tech
nological intervention, protection and modification (Lock 1993). And in popular
culture, this discourse is not limited by the alienating boundaries of biomedical
language.5 In popular culture sites including “Breast Fest,” everyday as well as
feminist languages are used to promote self-surveillance messages, such as Lacey
Brazeer’s call for “lovin’ care to your own breasts.” Breast cancer detection also
appears here as part of a broader ideology of female self-care, and is linked to
highly seductive messages of body-focused consumerism that engage imaginaries
of female success and beauty.