Breast cancer awareness and body confidence are not comparable issues, but they are linked; you can care about one more than the other, but you can also care about both. They are apples and oranges in terms of principles but there’s room for both on one plate. Consider them 2 of your 5-a-day allowance of important problems facing women.

I know it’s really annoying, but I have a lot of principles. See what I did there? I began a description of my character by criticising myself. Because I’m female. I had a friend at uni who had a, frankly hilarious, habit of responding to a compliment on an item of clothing with “It only cost £_!!!” by way of defending herself for having something nice, or perhaps for trying to look nice that day. One of my principles is that I can’t bear (and yet can’t get away from) head to toe assessments of women’s appearances. If you are female, breathing, and in contact with other humans on a regular basis you will know that your appearance never, ever goes unnoticed. Sometimes it’s lovely – your haircut gets noticed, the shoes you carefully matched with a necklace gets appreciated from an open car window by a friend driving past (true story). But other times it’s the total stranger (male stranger) who feels that it’s fine to say “cheer up!” or “smile love!” to you as you walk past frowning intently but actually just thinking about whether or not your keys are definitely in your handbag. It’s the builder who whistles at you, or the guy in a fast car who beeps you and makes you jump out your skin. It’s the shop assistant at the post office by your work building who always, always makes an ambiguous statement about the way you look – “haven’t seen you in a while. You look different. Very different.” That happened to me on Wednesday. The same man has a fondness for telling me I look tired, and I’m willing to bet the entire £15 I’ve paid into my pension so far that “you look tired” is not a compliment. OMG, I LOVE the bags – is that purple eye shadow? No. 

Cate Blanchett, on the red carpet at the Golden Globes earlier this year, bent down to look into the lens of a camera (attached to a photographer’s face, naturally) that was currently spanning her from the toe up extremely slowly, and asked “do you do that to the men?” She was being light-hearted, it was not the heated exchange that some papers made it out to be, but she made a valid point.

So when I became gradually aware yesterday of a social media craze, which amazingly and completely brilliantly raised over £1 million in 24 hours, of women taking selfies with no make up on and nominating other friends by name to do the same in the name of cancer, I sighed just a tiny bit. When I see something that sits badly with me, like this, I spend some time thinking about it to work out why my instinct is to wince at photos of my friends with no make up on. But I can’t emphasize this enough: I was not, am not, will never ever be, wincing at raising money for cancer research – why on earth would I? I also was not wincing because I thought it was vain, or petty, or frivolous, or… whatever else. I’ve done selfies, although they never make it onto the internet. When my boyfriend travels we send one another photos throughout the day so we can see each other’s faces, and every time I take one (then retake it, retake it again, retake it once more for good luck and trying to narrow down the quantity of chins in the picture) I think “urgh, I look awful. I hate my teeth.. and my eyebrows. And that extra layer of chub on my cheeks.” So it was highly possible that when seeing endless pictures of my friends in their natural, unadorned state could have made me feel good about not being perfect myself. But that wouldn’t have been a very nice emotion – never mind if I look like s**t, so-and-so from uni looks worse! I can’t help that my reaction was to feel disheartened that in order for one such vital, wonderful thing (ie the cancer fundraising surge) to occur, something else close to my heart had to be, in my opinion, set back a little bit. And it’s not just close to my heart. Did you know that the Girl Guides have a “be body confident” badge campaign at the moment? It’s a pledge to be “B.R.A.V.E”, I’ve signed it, and it entails:

B.e myself, and be proud of myself

R.ecognise and reject body image myths

A.ccept how I look and how others look

V.alue my body by treating it well

E.ncourage more people to be body confident as well.

According to statistics from the Guides, 87% of 11 to 21 year olds think women are judged more for their looks than their ability, and 71% would like to lose some weight. I can believe this without a second’s doubt for two reasons – I don’t think women are judged more for their looks than their abilities, I know they are. Secondly, I can remember being 11 and I thought I was so fat.

I do think it’s better that we’re beginning to reinforce a positive, more realistic body image through things like no make up selfies, and idolising (to the point of despair, for the women concerned) curvier women. But I watched an interview on Youtube with Christina “Mad Men” Hendricks, the woman who Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone has encumbered with the mantel of being the “correct” body ideal, in which the interviewer incessantly asked her questions about her curvier appearance. As though Hendricks were some alien who just landed on earth from space, the interviewer seemed fascinated by the fact that this actress was not a size zero and asked her twice “what has been your most inspirational moment [as a curvaceous woman]?” The first time she was asked this question, her face fell and she floundered for words before looking to her publicist for help, who advised the interviewer to move on. The interviewer asked exactly the same question, immediately. This time Christina responded “you just asked it again!” and ended the interview shortly after. She was there to talk about a film she’d made and discovered the only thing anyone was interested in was the size of her arse. The point I’m making being: while it’s nice that there is one, solitary woman on TV who is simultaneously curvy AND desirable to men (jackpot!), the media, the world, everyone, is still focussing on what she looks like instead of what she’s doing. I would rather have no body idols, personally, than a choice between natural, curvy “correct” ones and thin, unrealistic, “negative” ones. In short – it’s fine to look good, it’s fine to look bad. It’s not fine to focus on it above all else.

Part of the reason I felt disheartened by the campaign, is that I believe there are myriad ways that everyone could have been kept happy. Yes the nature of the viral selfies and nominations got everyone buzzing, talking, arguing and in the end, apparently, “that’s all that matters.” It’s not to me, when I am so sure the same awareness (a word I’m reluctant to use because awareness implies a spread of knowledge, which this was not. It was great, and while it did not spread awareness, it spread generosity) could have been achieved through means with less potential for bad feeling. My own approach was to write “check your:” above a drawing of some boobs on my face, of which I took an extremely close up picture showing only my cheek and eye. I didn’t nominate anyone to do the same thing, but I did donate. Twice, in fact, I thought it hadn’t worked the first time. Then when I was out walking on my lunch break today I saw a breast cancer screening unit in the car park of Waitrose and I thought – aha! That would have been great. Write the location of your nearest screening unit on a piece of paper (a quick google search would give you the answer to that question) and take a selfie of you holding it up for all to see. Wear make up for it or don’t, whatever. Or how about a selfie of you holding a sign with one golden rule for checking your breasts on it? My doctor advised me that when you feel them, it’s OK if they feel like cottage cheese but not if they feel like marbles. So simple, so memorable. Or a less informative but definitely saucy and bound to spread like wildfire idea – post a photo of the bra you wore that day. Totally relevant to breast cancer and still personal without being vulnerable. If I’d been nominated to do that I’d have thought it was brilliant.

To anyone who thinks I’m cynical for not wanting to just be involved like everyone else, sorry. That will never be how I think about anything. But don’t be angry with me and others who voiced their distaste for this, because we kept up our half of the bargain: we argued, made people angry and contributed to the success that goes along with a controversial campaign.