Bra status backlash begins

Di-Ve

11 January 2010 -- 12:45CEST

by Vanessa Macdonald - editorial@di-ve.com

Current Affairs --

http://www.di-ve.com/Default.aspx?ID=72&Action=1&NewsId=68385&newscategory=31

The next phase of the bra colour campaign is now sweeping across social networking site Facebook, with groups being set up against the campaign.
The Facebook group "I Really Dont [sic] Care What Color Your Bra Is" got more than 1,000 fans within hours while another advised members to donate time or money to cancer societies, rather than to post their status, if they wanted to make a difference.

The chain message started earlier this month, apparently between friends in the US who thought it would be a good way to raise awareness about breast cancer. Women were asked to post their bra colour – and nothing else – as their Facebook status and hundreds of thousands of women across the world did… within just days.

The original message read: "Just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of breast cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before people wonder why all the girls have a color in their status."

It will come as no surprise that groups were set up on the social networking site – 60,000 joined the “I updated my status with my bra colour” – but the backlash has already set in, with bloggers asking what exactly was achieved, and a new message doing the rounds: "An e-mail recently went out to women asking them to post the color of their BRA. THIS IS A VIRUS. To fix it, you must remove your bra, then go to > Settings > Enable Webcam > Record Movie. Please re-post to your status message."

In the meantime, several cancer organisations are saying that no matter who started the message or why, it has now become a campaign in its own right and was raising awareness.

One Facebook user, Nathaniel Vick, decided to put his pocket where his mouse was: "The 1,000 member mark has been broken!! $500.00 will be donated!! Keep it going to the next level!! I can't believe the response this group has been given. I will donate $500.00 to Susan Komen if this page reaches over 1,000 people by Monday 1/11. Double the amount, $1000.00 for 25,000 by next week Fri!! $2000.00 if 35,000 people join this group and a company matches me!!! Not to get the count but to make more people aware...."