Season Five of So You think You Can Dance featured a performance by Melissa and Ade that the promoters, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe in particular, touted as bringing breast cancer awareness to the forefront. The dance, a contemporary routine choreographed by Tyce Diorio, depicted a woman’s struggle with disease and the strength of her partner. Nigel was beaming with pride at Tyce’s “courage” at bringing such a tragic condition to the forefront. While I agree that the performance was beautiful, it was an artistic representation of an emotional struggle having nothing to do with breast cancer or breast cancer awareness. The dance did not present facts or information about breast cancer, not to mention the fact that breast cancer awareness promotional programs are in wide circulation and not in need of being brought to the forefront. The dance was beautiful and touching and addressed the heart ache that disease imparts. The only thing about the dance that spoke directly to cancer was a scarf over Melissa’s head, implying that her character had undergone chemotherapy. The triumphant assertion by Nigel that SYTYCD is bringing cancer awareness to the world is absurd.
It infuriated me that Melissa’s character couldn’t just have cancer, she had to have breast cancer. Cancer of the breast, the synecdoche of the female body, is what is highlighted as important, not fighting cancer, but fighting breast cancer. Wouldn’t want all the women in the world to be without breasts, how would we know how to trivialize them? The focus on the breast also implies that only women can get breast cancer, which is a misnomer. The tragedy that stems from the disease is not that the woman has cancer, the tragedy is that the woman has breast cancer and her status in the world as feminine will be lost if her breasts are lost to this terrible disease.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer found in women, which leads to the logical result that breast cancer awareness, treatment and research is the most common. However, breast cancer is the most commonly looked for and diagnosed cancer. It is also fairly easy to detect, any woman can check her breasts for lumps, while other cancers are more difficult to diagnose and often require costly testing. Not to mention the titillating notion of a woman feeling her breasts regularly.
I do not object to breast cancer research or to fighting breast cancer in general. I object to breast cancer as the focus and champion for all cancer research. And I object to a national television show to proudly proclaim their ability to bring such an “unknown” and enormous problem to the forefront. If the show actually wanted to do something revolutionary, Ade would have been the one dying of cancer and Melissa would have been the strong one carrying him through. While technically they might have had to adjust some of the lifts, Melissa is one of the strongest dancers to grace the stage of SYTYCD and would have been able to pull off the performance with grace and style. That would have been revolutionary.
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