Digital Becca

A month on and there’s no denying the success, in fundraising terms, of the no makeup selfies for cancer. They raised millions for Cancer Research UK, the first to spot their potential and channel participants to a text giving account.

The campaign ticked all the boxes for creating sharable content – it was image based, easy to do, involved a small twist on everyday photo sharing and was perfectly set up for social media.

Nevertheless, as soon as the campaign began, three niggling questions burned away in the back of my mind:

What does not wearing makeup have to do with cancer?

I love creating sharable content, it’s exciting, it’s satisfying, it has the potential to drive change and lead to something positive – it’s a great thing to be part of.

That said, taking a sharable action and tenuously uniting it with a disease that affects everybody is lazy. It undermines the communications industry and places organisations which focus on high profile causes at an unfair advantage.

It’s important to remember that the no makeup selfies were successful for two reasons, both the content and the cause. If we take away the cause then it’s a good idea, but it’s nothing new or groundbreaking. Cancer was the key ingredient which guaranteed viral, inspiring, money making success.

Good digital media campaigns need to be meaningful, justifiable and contribute to wider learning about what works and what doesn’t. This campaign doesn’t help smaller organisations working hard to change the world, because all it teaches the sector is that people really, really care about cancer.

If this is being linked to bravery, isn’t that appallingly insensitive?

Amid the confusion was a rumbling implication that the no makeup selfies were in some way linked to bravery. Throughout the campaign I saw a number of references to a genuinely brave woman who had had a double mastectomy and who shared a photo of her body in order to raise awareness and tackle the fear and stigma associated with the operation.

To suggest that everyday women taking makeup-less photos of themselves on the way to the gym was in any way an act of bravery, in this or in any other context, demonstrated a shameful lack of empathy for the millions of people struggling with the terrifying reality of having cancer.

Isn’t this whole idea a bit cringingly anti-feminist?

Finally, feminism took a real hit during this campaign and watching social media overflowing with women making demeaning and pro-patriarchal statements about themselves was intensely dispiriting.

“It’s all for a good cause” is no reason to send social progress careering back to the turn of the twentieth century. Women gave their lives to free us from these condescending stereotypes, so let’s please not forget there are plenty of other ways to give money to charity.

You could do it right now, here’s everything you need.