the bra brouhaha

On Thursday night, I started seeing odd status updates on my facebook news feed. Girls would post a color, often followed by a :-). I didn't think too much of it at the time. By Friday afternoon, I'd seen numerous color updates--enough to make me curious. So I googled "color status update on facebook" and discovered that the color was the color of the poster's bra. Ostensibly, this was being done to raise awareness for breast cancer.

My first thought was that this was funny. But a split second later, my amusement was bumped aside by these two questions:

1. How is sharing the color of my bra doing anything to fight breast cancer? Once I knew what the colors meant, my mind was not instantly transported into thinking about what I could do to fight breast cancer. Rather, I thought about what my friends color choice in bras said about them.
2. Why would I want guys thinking about my underwear? Perhaps if my facebook friends were only female, this would be a harmless (yet still pointless) exercise. But my facebook friends include male relatives, friends, coworkers, and students ... none of whom I want to be thinking about my choice in undergarments. I wouldn't post a picture of myself with my bra showing, so why would I purposely post something that could give them a mental picture of the same?

Later on in the day, I came across a blog post from Lisa Anderson of Boundless (a Focus on the Family ministry geared toward young adults). Her sentiments nearly mirrored mine, and she got to what may be the root of the problem:

But I didn't think of this blazation as bloggable until a Boundless Show listener emailed me this morning and brought up the same scenario. And it got me thinking again: Has "much" become "too much" when it comes to sharing on Facebook and beyond? Is social media making us shameless? Or at the very least, sloppy?

I know I have posted things I probably shouldn't have because it feels "safe" to say something on the web that you wouldn't say to someone face-to-face. So if nothing else, this insanity has served to remind me to be careful about the things I post online.

Today, things seem to have calmed down. I haven't seen any more color statuses, but I have seen some people posting breast cancer facts and figures ... things that will do far more to raise awareness than posting a bra color will. I also incited quite the debate when I linked to the Boundless post on my facebook page--as of now, there are 18 comments on the post--some agree with it, and some definitely don't!