Selfies as public health campaigns

Remember those ridiculous breast cancer awareness memes that go out every year, imploring women to 'have some fun' by writing Facebook status updates designed to confuse men? Well, the selfie evolution is merely the next step in the realm of public health campaigns. Ladies! Post a brave photo of yourself wearing no make up so we can raise awareness about eating disorders! #makeupfreeme!

#headdesk

The latest selfie campaign of this kind has been spearheaded by Jo's Cervical Cancer Trust in the UK, an organisation dedicated to those people affected by cervical cancer and cervical abnormalities.

In the UK, cervical cancer is the most common cancer found in women under the age of 35. In Australia, it's the third most commonly diagnosed gynaecological cancer, accounting for 1.6 percent of all new cancers found in women. In the US, more than a third of women diagnosed every year die from the disease.

And many of these deaths are preventable.

As part of a new awareness campaign, the organisation is targeting the 1 in 5 eligible Britons who fail to secure regular Pap smear visits to test for cervical abnormalities. (For people between the ages of 25 and 29, that figure increases to a concerning 1 in 3).

It's a noble cause, and an important one. Regular screening tests means that cancer of the cervix is one of the few cancers which responds well to early intervention. But embarrassment and/or discomfort around the relatively intrusive test means that many women aren't vigilant about the recommended biannual appointments.

Jo's Cervical Cancer Trust aims to change this by employing the tried and tested path of the unifying selfie campaign. Under the inescapably awful hashtag #smearforsmear, the organisation is calling for women to:

1. Put on your lipstick

2. Smear your lipstick and take a selfie

3. Use #smearforsmear and @JoTrust then nominate a friend

4. Share your selfie on social media (alongside a recommend tweet)

Over 1400 photographs have been shared on Instagram alongside the hashtag, with participants including persuasively famous celebrities like Georgia May Jagger, Cara Delevingne and Kirsty-Leigh Porter (an actress whose casting on popular soap Hollyoaks ensures her a wide UK-based audience).

Many of the photos shared appear to be from survivors of cervical cancer or other abnormalities, or from their friends and loved ones. Porter's own sister has been cancer-free for three years after beating the disease.

Without a doubt, there is quantifiable merit in campaigns like this. As confusing and absurd as it may have been, a viral trend last year which called for women to post 'no make-up' selfies (always with the bare faced bravery!) to 'raise awareness' for cancer resulted in over £8m being donated to Cancer Research UK - although whether this was as a result of backlash to the original directionless message is hard to say.

The 'ice bucket challenge', an ostensibly meaningless and silly prank designed to once again 'raise awareness' for ALS, was almost certainly largely used as a way to participate in a global activity as opposed to commit to any real change, but even it succeeded in raising significantly more annual funds for ALS research than in previous years.

It appears that if you build it, they will come - even if they take a circuitous route that makes no sense at all.

Full disclosure: I am precisely the person a campaign like Smear For Smear (shudder) is targeting. I remember the Pap smear I had late last year - but I can't remember when I had the one before that. I do know that it was at least six years prior and maybe even eight. I am an irresponsible human being and everyone should feel free to judge me for it.

But does a campaign that uses such a predictably irksome form of participant engagement (take a selfie!) really urge people to do anything other than participate for the purposes of that medium? And why, once again, does public health awareness around women's issues have to involve women placing themselves under a spotlight that encourages artifice and objectification? Why is this the go-to trend for organisational heads intent on sending their message 'viral'?

I'm sick of seeing deliberately doe eyed women with slightly parted lips and carefully placed cleavage telling me that I need to have better self-esteem or get my breasts checked or have a Pap smear so that I don't die.

Alas, my concerns probably put me in the minority. In a digital society that prizes and rewards 'individual expression', the selfie reigns supreme. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the public health campaigns which call for women to pose and share images of themselves to 'raise awareness' for issues which tend to benefit a lot more from people's donations than their enthusiastic Instagrams.

In a recent episode of Lena Dunham's Girls, viewer favourite Elijah explains his new photography obsession to Dunham's Hannah.

"I realised I got so good at selfies, I was bored. And I was like, what would happen … if I turned the camera around?"

What indeed.