The MTV public service announcement on breast cancer: Is it appropriate?

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month (oh, yay, here comes the everything-is-pink month). In that vein, a group of young people affiliated with MTV, a group called Rethink Breast Cancer, who are hosting an event called Boobyball (you read that right), made a public service announcement. (You can watch it here along with a short video about the making of the PSA).

If you didn't watch the PSA, basically it shows a shapely young woman walking around a pool in a bikini with several very, very close-up shots of her breasts. The message? "You know you like them. Now is the time to save the boobs."

I feel totally conflicted about this — for all my complaining about how breast cancer gets more than its fair share of funding, advocates and awareness, I have to also say that premenopausal breast cancer is particularly devastating and does need new treatments, since those women do have worse prognoses than older women, generally. I will forever be haunted by the memory of the 20-something patient who died on my ward with her toddler on her hospital bed crying, "Don't die, Mommy!" So, yes, anything that will educate young women that they too can get cancer is good.

And if this PSA makes men realize that breast cancer can be a young woman's illness and it brings in more research and treatment money for premenopausal breast cancer, who am I to complain? But as a feminist, this PSA gets under my skin. Do we really need to further objectify breasts and point out that breast cancer takes away "boobs"? (Isn't that obvious, even for the beach bum men featured in this PSA?) Isn't it more about the women themselves, their families, their lives and not their figure?

Not everyone agrees, though. The LA Times called the spots "brilliant." Am I overreacting? Watch the PSA, and tell me what you think.