These Blinged-Out Bras Are Helping Find a Cure for Breast Cancer
The fabric fashion show, Protect Your Girls, raises money for breast cancer research with bring-your-own, homemade, blinged-out bras designed by teens from local private, public and charter schools. The show takes place on May 15, 2016 in the Academy Mansion, New York. Image by Jill Werman Harris
This Sunday, May 15, within the halls of the Academy Mansion, a stately and elegant building off Fifth Avenue, teenage girls and their mothers will celebrate community, judge bras and raise awareness for breast health.
Spearheaded four years ago by high school students, who were inspired by their private school’s no fabric fashion show, Protect Your Girls, raises money for breast cancer research with bring-your-own, homemade, blinged-out bras designed by teens from local private, public and charter schools.
The bra designs are an art show of underclothes made with anything from guitar picks and jelly beans to mammogram prints and Skittles. Judges of the competition vote for creativity, of which there seems to be no shortage.
A bra in the fabric fashion show, Protect Your Girls, which raises money for breast cancer research. Image by Jill Werman Harris
Sponsored by Glamour Magazine the event benefits the Basser Research Center for BRCA at Penn Medicine, the only research center devoted exclusively to research and support for mutation carriers of the breast cancer gene (BRCA).
It’s estimated that approximately 1 in 400 people carry a faulty BRCA gene, which confers up to an 87% increase risk of breast cancer and 40% increased risk of ovarian cancer. But that statistic jumps exponentially for certain ethnic groups, like Ashkenazi Jews, among whom the prevalence is a staggering 1 in 40.
For the last few years Susan Getz, a Basser leadership council member, who has confronted the disease twice in the last twenty-five years, and her daughter, Annabelle 18, have organized the event.
“We have been doing mother-daughter breast cancer fundraisers since Annabelle was 9. She learned early on that knowledge is power, ” says Susan.
This is one of the duo’s favorite, they say, because they are putting the fun back in fundraising — whether for education, treatment, research or providing screening for undeserved communities — and giving girls a a chance to become more aware about breast health, the importance of family history and how genetics play a role in one’s health.
Annabelle adds, “We also want them to leave our event knowing that there’s a support network if one of their loved ones gets cancer.”
A bra in the fabric fashion show, Protect Your Girls, which raises money for breast cancer research. Image by Jill Werman Harris
The Protect Your Girls event is a terrific and entertaining way to discuss breast cancer, but it also raises the critical issue of the burden of knowledge faced by families with an inherited mutation, each member of whom has a 50% chance of getting the defective gene.
Once teens understand that genetic medicine is different than traditional medicine, they immediately recognize that they too are at risk and that knowledge can open up the floodgates for concern about what to do with the information.
Susan Domchek, MD, director of the Basser Center for BRCA at the University of Pennsylvania, emphasizes that for young women screening doesn’t start until 25.
“In the vast majority of families, we do not screen until age 25. We like to emphasize that when women talk to their daughters, they can let them know that there’s nothing they need to do right now apart from living a healthy active lifestyle.”
Genetic counselor Danielle McKenna, who will be at the event, agrees, citing that BRCA mutations are rare, accounting for only 5-10% of breast cancer. “It’s important to put it in context for teens. The likelihood is small and there are options for people who find out that they have a predisposition. They can manage that risk and take control of the situation. It’s empowering. “
The fabric fashion show, Protect Your Girls, raises money for breast cancer research with bring-your-own, homemade, blinged-out bras designed by teens from local private, public and charter schools. Image by Jill Werman Harris
The Protect Your Girls 2016 Event will be held Sunday, May 15, 2016 from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM at 2 East 63rd Street, New York. Attire is jeans and a touch of pink. Tickets are available for sale here.
Resources for parents and their children: – How to reduce your breast cancer risk. – Learn about feelings that parents commonly experience when dealing with the possibility of risk to their children and guidelines for communication.
Jill Werman Harris has written for the New York Times, Tablet, and other publications. She has a masters in bioethics and teaches medical students the importance of humanism in the doctor patient relationship. She’s the author of Remembrances and Celebrations: A Book of Eulogies, Elegies, Letters and Epitaphs (Pantheon).
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