Issue date: 12/6/07 Section: Editorial/Opinion

There aren't many things in this world that can get me into a riled up frenzy of anger and frustration. I have opinions on many things, but it takes a lot to get me revved up and passionate about controversial topics. Well, recently, there has been one topic that really gets my goat.

My passion stems mainly because that topic has struck my life in such a personal way on so many levels. Though my anger on the issue has been ongoing, it surfaced again Friday due to the debut of the controversial swimsuit calendar at SheNannigans.

From the get-go, I was not a huge supporter of the calendars. I really became infuriated about the topic when the creators and their supporters started making gratuitous, inaccurate and disrespectful comments regarding their "work."

In articles in The Spectator in 2005, the year the calendar debuted, the creators were saying this was a great way to help out a good cause and support cancer research. Yes, it probably raised some money. Bake sales on campus raise money. Heck, even bake sales protesting affirmative action have raised money on this campus.

The group could have started rubber athletic bracelets similar to the LiveStrong bracelets, which helped raise millions of dollars for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Now we don't have a celebrity cancer survivor on this campus who beat the worst prognosis for a cancer patient and then went on to win seven consecutive Tour de France championships to sell the bracelets, but it is an idea that is less humiliating to cancer patients.

Stripping yourself down to the skimpiest swimwear you can find and sexually posing on a jet ski or in the sand next to the Chippewa River is anything but respectful to yourself, to cancer patients, the university and the city it is embedded in.

Colleges Against Cancer has since passed the project along, which is now under control of the Eau Claire Calendar for Cancer.

Comments made by calendar creators at last year's and this fall's release have hit me even more personally than the first calendar.

An individual was quoted last semester by The Spectator as saying, "A lot of people look negatively at it, but I think the people who look at it negatively have never had cancer. You hear everyone talk about cancer ... it goes in one ear and out the other. I wanted to put a story behind the face."

When I read this, I did a double take. Really? Huh. Well, I oppose the calendar, and I think it would be safe to say that I had cancer. Seeing as how when I was 3 years old, doctors at the UW-Children's Hospital in Madison diagnosed me with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, and I suffered for three agonizing years getting pumped full of toxic chemotherapy, which was essentially killing me to the point where the cancer cells would not be able to survive. My mom would wash my hair at night and have it fall out in clumps. Not many 6 year olds can say they had to have sunscreen rubbed on their bald head. I would also completely destroy my room because of the drugs that I needed to take. My parents cried downstairs listening to me. Now there is a story behind a face.

Continued...

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