I have spent much of this past winter hibernating and feeling crap. I may write about it later, but that’s not what has brought me back.
What has brought me back is MacMillan’s Brave The Shave campaign and their horrible response to objections to the campaign.
It is a campaign asking people to donate money to other people who shave their heads in supposed solidarity with people losing their hair to chemo.
Let me state, for the record, that one of my oldest friends in the U.S. does this every year for St Baldrick’s. The issue I have is not the shaving.
The issue I have is the encouraging of happy smiling pictures of people shaving their heads shared all over social media. Have a think for a minute; imagine you have lost your hair to chemo or love someone who did. Maybe that person also lost their life to cancer.
Do you want to see picture after picture of happy smiling shaven head people on your Facebook feed? When you or your loved one cried their eyes out as they lost their hair? And when you cried yours out again when cancer took them from you?
Shaving your head in supposed solidarity to those who have lost it due to illness should not be entertaining.
I posted on their Facebook page telling them why I think this is a terrible idea. Their response? Pretty much pat me on the head and send me on my way.
And if you read down the page? You’ll see the same sort of response to people with and without cancer who feel as I do.
Macmillan claim to be about making lives easier when you have cancer.
Well, they aren’t. They are making it so very much harder.