Community and the Public Body in Breast Cancer Media Activism

Cancer Heroics: A Study of News Reports with Particular Reference to Gender

“…This has been done, in the first place, through analyses of cancers that typically affect women (for example, Kilgore, 1996) and, in particular, breast cancer, a disease which has been the site of political activism of varying degrees of radicalism (Cartwright, 1998;Potts, 2000). Such analyses, in general, depict the struggle metaphors of media treatments of cancer as aspects of patriarchal social control.…”

Networked Scars: Tattooed Bodies after Breast Cancer

“…This breast cancer "survivor" culture has been further characterized by a recent proliferation of breast cancer expert and popular health websites, forums, support groups, social media sites, blogs and newsletters in online spaces (Bell, 2006;Cartwright, 1998;Ehrenreich, 2001;Pitts, 2001Pitts, , 2004 where women can research and become informed about diagnoses and treatments. Through gathering information and seeking advice online, women are increasingly delegated as responsible for the management of their illness and their survival King, 2006;Rose, 2001).…”

“…A complex and multidimensional "breast cancer culture" 3 (Cartwright, 1998;King, 2006;Saywell et al, 2000) has materialized within a larger "biomedicalization healthscape 4 " (Clarke, 2010) where biomedicine has proliferated into all aspects of mass culture. Mass media in particular have played a central role in creating new visibilities for biomedicine in popular culture, and creating new subjectivities through discourses of health, illness and disease .…”

“…Online media have been pivotal in sanitizing tattooing practices and distancing them from social deviance (DeMello, 1995b;DeMello, 2000;Neville, 2005) and they have provided resources for health and illness . The latter is particularly true in relation to breast cancer, where women are encouraged to take responsibility for their health by making informed decisions (Bryson & Stacey, 2013;Cartwright, 1998;Orgad, 2005;Pitts, 2001Pitts, , 2004Sharf, 1997).This paper therefore concentrates on how practices of tattooing are situated into online biomedicalized discourses where they function as techniques of self-care (Foucault, 1986;Polzer, 2010) for breast cancer 'survivors' to return to a sense of wellbeing after various surgeries and medical interventions.…”

“…At the same time, online media can operate as sites for breast cancer activism in the creation of new publics (Cartwright, 1998;Orgad, 2005) wherein women can retell the stories of their bodies through new practices of inscription in ways that disrupt medicalized and masculinist reconstruction narratives. This essay will therefore also examine online media's potential for challenging and resisting biomedicalized discourses and practices through the creation of these new bodily assemblages (Puar, 2012).…”