A brilliant visual campaign called «Know your Lemons» (hashtag #knowyourlemons), launched by a British charity to increase awareness about breast cancer prevention, become viral on social media, with over 7 million views in a few days just on Facebook alone.
The visual campaign was designed many years ago by a young British designer, Corrine Beaumont, who had lost both her grandmothers to breast cancer at the ages of 40 and 62: she realised how little information on the signs of breast cancer was available in an appealing, visual form.
«Some patients don’t want to talk about breasts or look at them» Beaumont, who recently launched the charity Worldwide Breast Cancer, told the BBC. «Often women used in campaigns don’t look like ordinary women – but even those with little literacy can understand this.»
According to the BBC, the image was first spread on Facebook by Erin Smith Chieze: «In the past few days, I have received quite a few private messages about a “game” going around where you post a heart, then you are secretly supposed to state it is for breast cancer awareness. This is my response to all of these messages» Smith Chieze posted publicly on Facebook. «Someone once posted a picture on Facebook of what breast cancer can look like. Not feel, but look like. In December of 2015 when I saw an indentation that looked like one of those pictures, I instantly knew I had breast cancer. I tried to feel for a tumor, but my tumor was non palpable. I was diagnosed with breast cancer 5 days later and with stage 4 the following month. A heart did nothing for awareness. I knew what breast cancer was. I knew all about self exams, but a picture of what to look for keyed me into knowing I had a terminal disease. We need to give REAL information, not cute hearts. Without having seen a picture randomly with real information, I wouldn’t have known what to look for. Do us a favor, stop playing games with my life and start truly helping people. Metastatic breast cancer treatment research and real awareness. This is a photo I have found that is very similar to the one I originally saw. PLEASE, stop playing games that do not actually promote awareness, they often cause people to tune out anything that might even mention the word awareness. So if you truly want to help people WITH cancer, or those who will GET cancer, share photos like this one. I wish I remembered who posted the original picture I saw, it truly did make a difference for me.».
Leave a Reply