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Winking and Giggling at Creeping Death: Thanatophobia and the Rhetoric of Save the Ta-Tas

2013; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 37; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0196859913503969

1552-4612

Christopher M. Duerringer,

Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis

This article offers an examination of the rhetoric of Save the Ta-Tas, a breast cancer awareness and fund-raising organization whose breast cancer advocacy products are highly sexualized, flirtatious, cheeky, and irreverent, especially in contrast to traditional discourses about breast cancer that have tended to render the afflicted as brave warriors or infantile and docile. Reading the organization’s range of merchandise as a discourse, I argue for a post-Marxist perspective that understands these texts as part of an important moment where breast cancer advocacy is disarticulated from the specter of death in order to appeal to a thanatophobic public.