We all know October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It's everywhere. There's no escaping it. The pink ribbons on the cookies, the T-shirts, the cute socks. Almost every newsletter in my inbox is offering sales and discounts or pledging a donation to one of the cancer foundations.

Don't get me wrong: these donation drives are vital, and I will keep buying things to support them. It feels like the least I can do for the women and men battling this disease.

But.

Here's your reminder that pink-washing everything doesn't pay for breast cancer screening. Your donations may go to finding a cure, but if we're going to have a Breast Cancer Awareness Month, why aren't we focusing on what we can do NOW?

The truth is, the women who are fighting this disease aren't going to benefit from Pinktober. The donations and social media posts aren't going to make their current lives any less of a hellish landscape. Why? Because there isn't a human alive who doesn't know breast cancer exists. We don't need to bring awareness to this disease.

We need to bring awareness to what breast cancer means.

It's not about the boobs, or the tatas, or the hooters. Screw my tits, seriously. Yeah, I like them. I'm lucky enough at 43 to say they're small enough to still be perky. But they don't define me. They aren't me. But that's exactly what these 'Save the Tatas' and 'Save Second Base' and 'I Stare Because I Care' slogans say: the breasts matter. Not the woman fighting the disease. Not the family falling apart because of it. Her tits. Because heaven forbid a woman lose that body part that men like to stare at and become less appealing. 

'Breast Cancer Awareness' suggests that this is an unknown disease, a silent killer that no one knows exists. Or that perhaps we know it exists, but somehow that isn't enough. Look through any of the breast cancer awareness sites this month and you'll see bright, candy-pink infographics stuffed to the brim with facts and numbers. I even made some up for you myself. Informing you of just how vital these month-long drives are, in case you've somehow forgotten.

Do you know what women battling this disease don't care about, though? Your thoughts on their breasts.

They sure as hell don't think any of the Save the Tatas-type slogans are cute or funny.

If you've followed this blog for any length of time, or even peeked around for a minute or two before clicking on this post, you know that last November, I lost my mom to this disease. You've seen that for five years, I took her to every appointment, treatment, procedure, test, and check-up. For nearly four of those five years, Mom and I spent hours alone in my car, talking about everything. Anything. Nothing. We were close, and there weren't any subjects that were off-limits during those car rides. But not once--not once--did my mom express any sadness or disappointment over the loss of one of her breasts. Losing it was a slightly more painful haircut--something she didn't necessarily want, but knew she needed, and give it a week or two and she'd be fine with the results.

Before anyone blasts me for comparing a mastectomy to a hair cut, please understand I am not, in any way, making light of that life-altering procedure. But from the day she was first diagnosed in 2014, through her first rounds of chemo, the mastectomy, radiation, remission, and metastasized recurrence, the thought of losing her breast was barely a blip on her radar when compared to everything else. After all, if having her right breast removed meant saving her life, where was the difficult choice? I mean, if you had to choose between losing a finger and dying, you'd choose to lose the finger, right?

And right there is the problem with "I Stare Because I Care" campaigns. No other disease or cancer focuses on body parts or organs more than the person. We don't have campaigns to save the throat or whole months dedicated to how we don't want men to lose their prostrate. Why would we?

 The fact that we need these slogans and campaigns tells me a couple things:

• Whoever created these campaign types decided that the best/only way to get men involved in breast cancer awareness was to redirect the focus from the woman to the breast.
• We are a society that still, as a whole, value a woman first by her appearance and sexiness, than as a human being.

This week, I reached out to an online friend that I've 'known' for probably a decade. Maggie lost her mom to breast cancer just a few months before I lost mine to it, so I asked Maggie if she'd be willing to answer a few questions about Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and how she felt about it.

Me: Maggie, how do you feel about Breast Cancer Awareness Month overall, but specifically the pink washing and 'Save the Tatas/I Stare Because I Care' type of campaigns?

Maggie: I’ve long said that the name is unproductive. Does anyone over the age of five not know what breast cancer is? The name is too passive and means nothing. This is a war. It is the second most diagnosed cancer in women. Though the death rates are down, it is still killing women (like my mom) every year. So, I think the only “awareness” anyone needs are that it’s still deadly and we don’t have a cure.

As far as the campaigns, I hate most of them. “Save the Tatas” sexualizes the disease. This is not about saving breasts. It’s about saving LIVES. The pink campaigns are less offensive. Pink ribbons are fine. I saw a shirt once that read “Yeah, they’re fake. The real ones tried to kill me.” That says it all for me. We focus too much on the breasts because they’re highly sexualized in our culture.

Me: My mom was not at all concerned with losing her breast, and I feel like that's normal for the majority of women. If it's between losing one or both and saving your life, it's not a tough decision. But a lot of women see their breasts as part of what makes them female and sexy. Did your mom feel the same, or was it not even much of a passing thought?

Maggie: Initially, it was a concern for her. But my mother was a widow when she got it for the second time, and had never been interested in looking “sexy,” rather she was concerned about her weight for much of her life. After losing both breasts, her main concern was having people stare at her chest, in particular those who knew about the surgery. Once she got hugged by a man she knew, and he held on a little too long and too tight and she told me “I think he was trying to figure out what I had in there." She laughed about it, but I think it bothered her. And it made me angry.

(Eden note: This makes me furious, and sick. Because of course someone did that, because his right to curiosity about her body was more important than preserving her dignity and personal space. )

Me: If you could help in the rebranding of Pinktober and BCAM, what would you want to see implemented/changed? What would you want to see more focus on? Or research/time directed towards? (I'm at the point where I mostly think Planned Parenthood could be a game changer if they had the resources, with all the screenings and early detection they do)

Less time on the outward appearance fixation. Rather than awareness, I’d like to see Breast Cancer Battle Month. Raise funds for research, in particular. Mammograms are important, but unfortunately, they’re not 100% accurate. They didn’t catch my mother’s second bout. Detection is important but it’s what comes after that is the hard part. Just today, Mayo Clinic released a story regarding a clinical trial for a vaccine that has show promise in curing it. It may even work for prevention. But we won’t know until more studies are completed. The way to defeat cancer is in the body’s own power. I am convinced that immunotherapy would have at least slowed down my mother’s cancer, but I still don’t know, her doctor never gave her the option.

The other aspect I feel is important is determining why it happens in the first place. My mother was cancer- free for 16 years, then it came back without warning and raced through her body. Her nurse told me “Given her age and overall health, there is no reason she should have been in the 25% who have fast growing cancer. Maybe in the future we will discover a genetic component we don’t know about right now. There is a lot we still don’t know.”

Me: How do you feel, generally, when you see all the ribbons everywhere in October? Do you feel different about it now than you did before your mom was diagnosed?

Immediately after my mother’s first diagnosis, I welcomed the feeling of support all the pink stuff gave me. We attended Race For the Cure the first few years, but the longer she was cancer-free, the harder that event became. We both likened it to “picking at the scab.” After the second diagnosis, when we all realized this was more serious than the first time, I didn’t want to see anything pink. I tried not to think about cancer all day, every day, and the ribbons—though well-meaning—only made me more anxious.

Now, I feel anger. Not at those who sport the ribbons, but at the disease. I ask myself “Why did that person survive, and my mother didn’t?” The randomness of the way it strikes is impossible to reconcile. I am still angry. She will be gone two years in February. I don’t know how I feel about all the pink this month. I guess I am numb to it because I have to be to survive. To get through every day.

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Breast Cancer Stats*

• 1 in 8 Women Will Be Diagnosed With Breast Cancer In Their Lives
• 268,600 New Cases of Breast Cancer Are Expected To Be Diagnosed In The United States In 2019
• 85% Of Women Diagnosed With Breast Cancer Have No Family History Of Breast Cancer
• 41,600 Women Are Expected To Die Of Breast Cancer In 2019

I'm not going to lie. The process of writing this post took me days longer than I expected it to, let alone wanted it to. I couldn't even put my finger on exactly why it was taking me so long, until I was re-typing out the above statistics while thinking about the word 'awareness'. Then it finally hit me.

Stop Acting Like Women Don't Know About Breast Cancer

Stop acting like women are oblivious to this disease. While 1 in 883 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019, there's no campaign to make men aware they need to check their breasts.

Also, one more thing before I wrap this up.

Please, Please Stop Saying She 'Lost' Her Battle With Cancer.

In fact, let's banish that phrase from the English language completely, okay? No one ever loses a battle with this demon. Because to 'lose' it, it insinuates the person didn't fight hard enough or want to win bad enough to beat it. If the cancer killed them, it doesn't matter how strong a person was. It didn't matter how hard they fought, what doctors they had, how much they prayed, or how perfectly they ate, exercised, and dieted, or that they lost every last scrap of dignity they could hold on to--they were never going to beat it in the end.

But I want you to look at my mom, at Maggie's mom, at every woman and man you know who've battled cancer and tell me they 'lost'. My mom didn't lose anything. My mom fought, breathed, laughed, and pulled herself back from certain death for years against the disease she already knew was going to destroy her. She. Knew. And yet, she fought for two more years to steal back every second she could from that monster.

So stop with the 'Awareness' campaigns. Stop with 'Save the Tatas'. Stop with 'A Feel a Day Keeps the Doctor Away '. Stop with 'Cancer Survivors are Sexy' and 'Don't Let Cancer Steal Second Base'.

If you want to help fight this disease, please consider making a donation to Planned Parenthood, which provide almost 300,000 breast exams a year, of which they detect anomalies or lumps in 70,000 women. A YEAR.

Also, here is a detailed list by Medical News Today about the best, most effective breast cancer charities to donate to for real impact in 2019.

*statistics found at breastcancer.org