Issue date: 12/11/08 Section: Editorial/Opinion

For the entire semester I have been waiting for "singer" Katy Perry to do something worth writing about in my weekly column.

I could have discussed how much I feel she is doing extraordinary damage to the always present feminist movement. Or I could have touched upon how angry it makes me that she exploits women to gain money and her own gender seems to be fine with it. I even could have addressed that I feel I should be financially compensated for having to share the same date of birth as her.

But, a gift came to me a little early this holiday season when Perry decided to make a mold of her breasts and put it up for auction to benefit a breast cancer awareness charity.

According to a Dec. 3 E! Online report, a cast of Perry's breasts painted and accessorized by her boyfriend, Travis McCoy from Gym Class Heroes, was set to go up for auction until Dec. 6. The sale of the multicolored piece, which ended up going for $3,550, will benefit the Keep a Breast Foundation's youth outreach program.

The debate over what is right and wrong when raising money for charities that fight against cancer is something that is not foreign to UW-Eau Claire. There even seems to be a yearly debate over the rights and wrongs of things, such as selling swimsuit calendars and then donating the profits to cancer charities. I won't go into my personal opinions on the swimsuit calendar issue, but essentially the Perry situation mirrors it.

Instead of doing something productive that keeps essentially everyone happy, such as putting on a concert and donating the profits from it to the Keep a Breast Foundation's youth outreach program, she had to go and do something that perpetuates the idea that females are defined by their breast size and appearance. I suppose this may be a hard thing for Perry to do seeing as though she has no real talent.

The most troubling part of the whole ordeal however is the fact that the Keep a Breast Foundation had no apparent problem with putting the item up for auction. Now maybe if the proceeds from the auction went to the group overall I would be a little more lenient with their choice to condone this type of fundraising. This would cause a message to be sent to adults as opposed to children, and the message is likely one they already know and have come to terms with; sex sells and people will perpetuate that problem as long as it doesn't hurt them.

However, for those children using the association's educational outreach and who learn of where their funding is coming from (Perry's breasts), it is as if they will be receiving another education unrelated to cancer. They essentially are being taught that it is a socially and morally acceptable to sell their bodies for money when the ends justify the means.

Instead of putting together events like UWEC's Relay for Life, in which people productively, and not at the expense of an entire gender, run around a track in order to raise money for the American Cancer Society, the Keep a Breast Foundation told children they are better off using their body (if they have one's good enough to sell that is) because it will raise more money faster.

And although the number of kids learning because of Perry's actions likely aren't old enough and don't care enough to ask "where did the money come from that is used to help me learn?", it still is disgusting that such an adult oriented object with layer upon layer of hidden messages will be used to raise money.

Seeing Perry sell her breasts for charity was not a shock. Someone like her, who is famous because of her physical characteristics instead of actual musical talent, is pretty much guaranteed to resort to publicizing the only thing going for her and try to make it out to be a good thing.

But charities on the other hand have much more going for them than appearances. They can actually do good, more good than any celebrity really ever could, and seeing them resort to the level of a celebrity and a celebrity's actions such as this is just a shame.

Charities are supposed to be working for a greater good, not doing more harm than good. By using these types of tactics, which continue to validate the selling of sex and lookism, the charities may be helping people to survive. But they aren't exactly helping them out by getting them to survive and then presenting them with a world that doesn't celebrate the person, but how they look and how they can use their bodies for monetary gain.

Hansen is a junior print journalism major and editorial editor of The Spectator. "Mmmboppin' with Scott Hansen" appears every Thursday.

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