August 11, 2007

Crazy Sexy Cancer?

So, I'm flipping around the boob tube this evening and I came across an ad for this documentary, which is airing on The Learning Channel later this month. The name of the documentary is Crazy Sexy Cancer.

Crazy Sexy Cancer is an irreverent and uplifting documentary about a young woman looking for a cure and finding her life.

In 2003, 31-year-old actress/photographer Kris Carr was diagnosed with a rare and incurable cancer. Weeks later she began filming her story. Taking a seemingly tragic situation and turning it into a creative expression, Kris shares her inspirational story of survival with courage, strength, and lots of humor.

With experimental treatment as her only option, Kris became determined to find answers where there were none. She traveled throughout the country interviewing experts in alternative medicine as she tenaciously dove head first into a fascinating and often hilarious holistic world. Along the way, she met other vivacious young women determined to become survivors. Their stories are as poignant and exciting as the women who tell them. As Kris's amazing journey unfolds, she realizes that healing is about truly living rather than fighting.

Crazy Sexy Cancer is more than a film, it's an attitude! It's about rising to the challenge of life, and no matter what, refusing to give up who you are at your core. This story is as funny as it is frightening, as joyous as it is outrageous. Ultimately, Crazy Sexy Cancer is a thought provoking film about, friendship, love and growing up.

Now, I don't want to get down on anyone telling their tale of survival over this beast of a disease. If I'm allowed, so are they. What I am going to go postal on, however, is the name of this documentary. Crazy Sexy Cancer?

What the fuck?

If you look at the title, and, just for fun, decided to diagram it, "cancer" would be your noun and "sexy" and "crazy" your adjectives. Adjectives, as any first grader could tell you, are meant to "enhance" your noun. Adjectives are meant to make a simple noun, like, say, "cancer," more descriptive. As far as our two adjectives here, "Crazy" is simple enough. It doesn't describe cancer in a technical way, but it does describe it, nonetheless. What I don't get, and won't ever get is how you could possibly describe cancer as "sexy." I ask you, my devoted Cake Eater readers, what could possibly be sexy about cancer? Cancer is, by definition, abnormal cell growth. Tumors. Stuff that shouldn't be there. Can tumors be sexy? Is there such a thing as MRI pr0n? Step right up, get your Pet Scan jollies right over here?

I think we all know what they're going for, and it isn't to highlight how sexy tumors are. It's rather about empowerment. It's about taking control of your disease, if you happen to be afflicted with this particular malady. It is, in essence, about highlighting all that Girl Power crap the Spice Girls foisted on us ten years ago. That's all well and good, but the inclusion of the word "sexy" in the title of this film, well, it just freakin' offends me. I can't tell you how much it makes my blood boil to hear cancer described as "sexy," let alone to receive the message that I, as a cancer patient, can be "sexy." Well whoop-de-freakin'-do. Thank you ever so bloody much. As if being "sexy" was the most important thing right now; as if sexiness is the only thing my soon-to-be renewed existence was meant to revolve around.

Cancer ain't sexy.

Being a cancer patient ain't sexy.

There is absolutely nothing sexy about the entire experience.

Is it sexy when you're recovering from having a tumor the size of a baseball cut out of you and you can barely wipe your own ass effectively because you're so weak and the IV tubing keeps getting in the way? Is that sexy? Is it sexy when you vomit bile and are unable to eat? Is it sexy when you can't walk four blocks to the grocery store for an entire month? Is it sexy when you're stuck for five hours at a time in a recliner at the oncologist's office, receiving the most toxic drugs a body can handle without dying (and even then some people do) intravenously? Are anemia and neutropenia---my two current maladies due to the chemo---sexy? Are blood disorders hot nowadays?

What the fuck?

None of these things are sexy. Nor do they have a flaming thing to do with sex appeal. It's cancer for chrissakes. IT'S NOT A SEXY EXPERIENCE. It's not meant to be. For God's sake, not everything that happens to you during this lifetime is meant to revolve around what makes someone happy in the pants. Furthermore, to try and sell it as a 'sexy' experience, or rather one wherein you, the victim of this disease, can still, reportedly, feel sexy is to cheapen the entire process. Because, as I've come to appreciate, you get cancer for a reason. That reason may be, in strict scientific terms, that you can't fight off tumors because of one genetic defect or another. Or it could be more metaphysical. It might just be that you got cancer because God thought you could handle it. That He decided there were lessons in this life that you were meant to learn and you could only do so by enduring this experience. I don't know, but if the only lesson I was meant to learn during this whole ordeal was that I could still be sexy while I'm as bald as a goddamn egg and sick as a dog, well, I'm going to be pissed off.

Cancer is not something Madison Avenue needs to sell. It's already being sold to one in three people around this world, and it's selling like hotcakes, I tell ya. Every damn day of every damn year. No one needs to hire an ad agency to sell cancer. The sales figures are doing just fine, thank you ever so much.

I wish the filmmaker well. I really do. I don't want to shit on her experience or what she learned during her experience with cancer. I'll tune in when the film airs. But she could have come up with a better title.

Posted by Kathy at August 11, 2007 12:04 AM | TrackBack
Comments

GO GIRL!

Posted by: Mom at August 11, 2007 07:37 AM

What Mom said!

Posted by: Margi at August 11, 2007 11:15 PM

THANK YOU!!! More power to the young lady making the film (I don't have cable so I probably won't see it unless I can get someone to donate a copy to our Cancer Center Resource Library (not a bad idea -- thanks for the tip!) I can think of a whole shitload of up-lifting adjectives about my own personal experience with cancer, but, sorry, sexy ain't one of 'em. But then, I never found Telly Savalas to be terribly sexy either, and that's who I most resembled during chemo. Probably just as well, since I was, and remain, profoundly single throughout, so most of my sex is of the DIY variety. Not that you can't be and feel sexy whilst remaining single and mostly celibate, but it just wasn't what I was wasting a lot of energy on during treatment!
Keep up the good work, kiddo!!

Posted by: Marianne at August 12, 2007 11:13 PM

Excerpt from Glamour Magazine interview:

ME: When I tell people I’m in a movie called Crazy Sexy Cancer, I usually get a laugh or a puzzled look. How the heck did you come up with that title?
KRIS: When I was first diagnosed, I’d e-mail updates to friends, and the subject line was always “Crazy Sexy Cancer.” It was shorthand for saying that even though something really bad had happened, I was still me—and still sexy! If I didn’t poke fun, life would get way too serious.

You can read the whole article here:

http://www.glamour.com/health/articles/2007/08/crazysexycancer

Posted by: Wizard at August 15, 2007 06:20 AM

I have not watched the program yet, as I assume you have not as well, but I will definitely watch it this evening. I would conclude that it is a simple way to get attention (you could be a prime example, it worked!) and try to show it is a serious disease, it is sad, it is depressing, etc. but the person is still a person. This person is still funny, real, alive, crazy and still sexy. There are many different ways to be sexy, and one of them is to be strong and live with all you have while you can.

Posted by: Melissa at August 29, 2007 07:17 PM