Month: March 2016

Turning My Stomach

I know what you’re thinking: you see a picture of Joan Lunden in a post and think this is another celeb-with-cancer bashing piece. Not exactly. I’m certainly no fan of Lunden or any of these celebs sharing their “inspirational stories”–and in my opinion Lunden IS one of the worst of them. But this picture is only partly her fault. Let me explain.

You see, this is an ad for People magazine. That issue of the magazine, that cover, is old. Yet the ad containing the cover picture, with the little items around the magazine cover, yeah, it’s new. I tore it out of my most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly. I’ve been seeing the ad in a few other magazines this weekend–I was, um, sifting through a huge backlog of magazines to clear some out. Yes, I still read actual magazines, sometimes for recipes (glossy, colorful pictures motivate me better). And man, I’ve been behind in reading-‘n’-recipe-reviewing, so this weekend was all about reducing my backlog!

OK defensive digression over.

Are these items holy relics or something?
Are these items holy relics or something?

So in short, I saw this ad a few times and as I reached the last magazine in my pile I yanked out this page and took a good long look at it. As I did so, I understood why it turned my stomach more than the usual celebs-with-cancer stuff I see. Have you seen this ad? Have you really looked at it, thought about it? (I kinda hope you have seen this ad, since I am no picture/computer wiz–and this scanned copy of the ad is not very clear and probably too small, but if you click it, it should get bigger.)

The ad, which IS for People, chose this older issue to tug at heartstrings, to sell magazines (yes everyone seems to use certain kinds of cancer patients to sell product). People magazine is touting their attention to the details as one reason they are so good at telling stories about people worth being in their magazine (that last part about worth is questionable, but I’m going with it for now). Continue reading “Turning My Stomach”

Harm

“What’s the harm?” “First, do no harm.” “Do what you will, so long as it harms none”. I realize the surrounding connotations of these phrases–that these phrases, well, the last 2, are discussed in long essays (like about how oncologists have to cause some harm to treat cancer, for example). I don’t take it lightly, but I don’t want to get into it either. All I want to discuss here is the surface idea of the phrases–the notion that we are “free” to do whatever we please, so long as we don’t harm others. My thought lately is, some things do more harm than is recognized. So much for our “freedom” to do whatever we want, the notion that we are all entitled to our opinions and the murky area of sharing (foisting them on?) others.

During and right after treatment, when I was in my white-hot-angry-at-perky-cancer-culture era, I kicked against the expectations of cancer patient behavior/views. When I started blogging, I found others who said we are all free to “do” cancer as we want. Well, I could get on board with that! But these days I see that idea as, well…an ideal that is not often realized. Continue reading “Harm”