This morning my 2 year old son:

• Visted Santa's grotto with his grandparents and I, and we delighted in the fairytale of Christmas.
• Came home and spent an hour running round the backyard naked under the sprinkler, screeching with happiness with mama and dada watching on in joy.
• Ate a feast of strawberries for lunch and then snuggled in bed with me for a story defore drifting off to slumberland.

I kissed Sol sweet dreams and came to my study in a happy bubble of pre-Christmas bliss. I checked the news.

Lead story: "A 24-year-old man has appeared in court on a charge of assault after the body of a five-year-old girl was found in her Napier home early this morning."

Another story: "Child advocacy organisations are calling on those that turned a blind eye to the systematic abuse of a nine-year-old Waitakere girl to be held accountable."


More statistics to add to New Zealand's appalling child abuse record.

After a morning delighting in the happiness of my toddler, this shocked me back to reality.

Far too many kiwi kids are not spending their Christmas holidays filled with care and love. Too many children have days full of fear and pain.

I am sick of reading about the deaths of innocent children, and subsequently of the individuals that turned a blind eye to the abuse.  A number of people have already admitted that they knew about the horrifying situation the 9 year old girl in Waitakere had been enduring for two years. I am sure that right now there will be many people wrestling with the guilt of not saying anything that could have saved the life of the 5 year old girl in Napier.

I wish that every child in our community could enjoy a Christmas free of violence and anger. But domestic violence surges over the festive season. So I know I will read about more violence and possibly more deaths before this festive season is over.

We all need to take responsibility for this epidemic.  People are working hard, very hard to address the problem. Child Matters is one such organisation. Visit this website, read the material, support their work. And in the midst of your Christmas celebrating, do think about the many kids in our communities for whom Christmas means a very different thing than the Disney fairytale.

Maybe we all need to consider what we each can do to help in the fight against this epidemic when we are pondering our 2011 resolutions.

It’s been a fascinating few days since I was alerted to the breasts marketing campaign and wrote my original blog post. This was picked up by the media and I appeared on current affairs show Close Up on Friday evening, debating NZgirl’s founder Jenene Freer.

As my first TV experience, I would say it was definitely trial by fire!  It was certainly set up as a heated debate, rather than an ‘interview’ per se, and the fact that it was live to air made it a pretty intense experience.  People have vehemently criticised both of us for interrupting each other, but I feel the producers had intended it to be this way so have stuck up for Jenene here.  Jenene and I shook hands afterwards and she was very gracious. She said to me afterwards that on many things we were probably on the same page. I agreed with her, and certainly regarding breast cancer, we both would love for no woman to suffer this dreadful disease.  What we disagree on is the level of harm caused that is an acceptable level in order to raise ‘awareness’ or money.

Who has this campaign harmed?

•    The women and their families who uploaded naked breast photos that now feature on countless explicit porn sites. These women have no control over this image, or what has happened to it. 

•    The many women and girls for whom a happy, healthy body image and strong self esteem is a challenge. The site clearly shows whose breasts are the most popular, and these are the breasts that conform to that narrow version of beauty pedalled by the media.

•    The many breast cancer survivors for whom “a lovely pair” campaign is just a blatant reminder of what they have not got. I have been overwhelmed by the poignant messages from many of these women. Kate has written a very touching post on this.

I know that many people support NZgirl's campaign, and I know that many women have felt empowered and positive about it. That is good for them and I am not speaking for those women. I am speaking out for the many people who have been humiliated, exploited, degraded and offended by this campaign.

Jenene Freer is a smart woman, she has achieved huge things in the business world and I really respect her for what she has achieved.  Among other things, she is a director of an internet advertising company – she knows how to get websites making money. And no one can deny this marketing campaign has been a resounding success.  Freer will be well aware of the HUGE impact this will have had on her advertising revenue – it  will more than cover their maximum $5000 donation. And going forward, she can use these viewing stats to further convince advertisers to join them.  Freer yesterday stated that "And just in case anyone wonders, and to clear up the "marketing ploy", I will never enter this into any marketing awards."  So, companies only run marketing campaigns to win awards? Funny that, I understood that marketing campaigns were about increasing revenue.

NZgirl are making way too much money out of this campaign, I can see that it would be financial madness for them to take it down.  So I am not holding out hope for that. But I am relieved that they have responded to some of the criticisms and added a lot more information to their site with regards to breast cancer awareness, moderating images and about the implications of sharing information on the internet.  It’s still too little, too late.

It’s been quite a journey over the past few days and tomorrow morning I need to get back focussed on my work projects and my family.  For those of you that sent abusive whacko messages, you have provided great entertainment.  For those of you that have argued fairly against me, I respect you for making a stand for what you believe in.  And for all you wonderful fantabulous people from all round the world who sent me countless messages of support and encouragement, you rock my world.  The passion and outrage has been so powerful and I am proud to have been a part of the voice.  Onwards and upwards!

** 8 Dec Update: NZGirl have been forced to clarify one of the un-truths stated in the Close Up interview. They put this on their Facebook wall yesterday:
"The New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation have requested we clarify any reader confusion and state that the ‘lovely pair’ campaign is in no way supported or endorsed by The New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation."
Close Up followed up with this article.
Freer has continued to deny it, as evidenced in her comment below. I provided the exact transcript and find it sad that she wants to continue the lie.

There was widespread discussion about the ''I like..." Facebook craze last month.  While I felt that this campaign sexualised breast cancer in a weird kinda way, NZ Girl's latest campaign has left me (nearly) speechless. Viewers are invited to "get your tits out for the girls!... and don't forget to check out the other lovely pairs, beautiful boobs and pretty titties already uploaded."

For every 50 pairs of "titties" uploaded by viewers, NZGirl will donate $1000 to breast cancer awareness.  This campaign began yesterday and already there is a gallery of over 49 pairs of breasts to peruse, rank and comment on.

Hmm, a gallery of "titties" ranked according to popularity and the ability for me to leave comments about them. How exactly is this different to a crude pornography site?

NZGirl is exploiting women and girls in order to drive traffic to their website. It is making light of an horrific disease in order to gain popularity. It is belittling the experience of breast cancer sufferers, many of whom are left scarred or who have had to have their breasts removed. But in marketing terms, this campaign has been a resounding success - over 25,000 people visited the site this morning, crashing it.

Boganette has written a great post on why NZGirl's campaign is oh-so-wrong: "Celebrate breasts, of course. But don't do it in the name of breast cancer. Breast cancer isn't about breasts. It's not something you should have a laugh about on Twitter. It's not something you should joke about on Facebook. It shouldn't be a reason for posting photos of your breasts or flashing them or 'getting them out'... Breast cancer is a horrible, miserable, horrifying disease - that's it. It's cancer - it's not motivation for you to be happy with your body."

I hate the pretty-fying of breast cancer. The sexy-fying of breast cancer. Breast cancer is not sexy images of pert wee breasts. If you want to see the realities of breast cancer, check out The Scar Project. It's raw and it's real. There is nothing funny about it.

According to Stuff: NZgirl editor and general manager Tee Twyford said the campaign wasn't about driving traffic to their site, but about raising awareness.  "The reason for it was twofold. There was a desire to have readers feel really good about their breasts and we wanted to align it with a breast cancer cause to get greater awareness and funding," Twyford said.

So, according to Tee Twyford, women need to share photos of their breasts with the world in order to feel good about themselves. We all need to seek external validation to make sure that our breasts are up to scratch, that they're OK.  Dear Tee, please explain how being in the lower half of the rankings is going to help 50% of those women feel good about their breasts?   Because Tee, in a rankings system, there is always a loser. And for the 'winners' in the top half of the rankings, are they supposed to feel great about themselves because a whole bunch of strangers have critiqued their breasts and given them a thumbs-up?

Tee Twyford, I am not going to send your website a photo of my breasts. They are beautiful and I love them. But I don't need NZGirl to rank them and I don't need strangers to give me their comments about them. Because those strangers don't know that my breasts and I have been through lots together.  Those strangers don't know or care that my breasts fed my baby and that I love them in all their uneven, stretch-marky, increasingly-less-pert glory.  Or that it took me quite some time to learn to love them.

Disturbingly, but not surprisingly, many of the breast photos that have been uploaded seem to be of teenagers.  Through Enlighten Education I work with teen girls throughout New Zealand. I often have tears of sadness when talking with them about the immense pressures they face with regards to their body.  New Zealand's rates of eating disorders and depression amongst teenagers are skyrocketing.  Just yesterday I spent a morning with 150 gorgeous year 10 girls who all told me that they felt that they were not beautiful enough, not skinny enough and not perfect enough.  It is campaigns such this one that add to the overwhelming pressure and sense for girls that they are just not enough. As soon as I have posted this I am going to email Tee Twyford to invite her to sit in on one of these sessions. Perhaps then she would realise the effects that such media campaigns have on our girls.

Once photos are uploaded on to the internet, the owners cease to have any control over how they are used. To assume that these photos will not be used for pornographic purposes is naive. We teach girls to never upload compromising photos of themselves - why is a (previously) respected website encouraging them to do exactly this?

Women, why are we doing this to each other?  Are men rushing to upload photos of their penis to raise money for "cancer awareness"? 

NZGirl, if your motivation really is to raise money for breast cancer research I can think of a million more positive ways to do this.  Even simpler: if you really want to donate to a good cause, just get out your credit card and donate. Simple.