Why are all the RBMS Silver Stars and Cheerleaders wearing pink to the games? “We wear it for Breast Cancer awareness,” said Presley Borie, a 7th grade Silver Star. This is a tradition the Silver Stars do every year to spread awareness. “We just wear it around the school, not to perform,” said Presley. It would be great if we had performances to just be one step further in spreading awareness but it’s great they wear it around school as well!

Although most people don’t take Breast cancer very seriously, it is a really important cause. Around 1 in 8 US women get invasive breast cancer in their lifetime (13%) and this doesn’t include if their family member has had it. If a member of your family has a history with it your chances nearly double. Breast cancer is also the most common cancer in women, this means you might even get it within your lifetime.
If you are a man you probably think I’m wrong about that last statement but I mean what I said, around 2,650 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected in men in 2021. A man’s lifetime risk is also 1 in 833 which is low but not impossible in fact, far from it. There is a stigma that men don’t get breast cancer since “It’s more of a women’s body feature.” This is very far from the truth and men’s breast cancer should be more normalized.

Although breast cancer is a very common and invasive species of cancer the death rate drops about 1% a year. This will hopefully lead to a zero percent death rate but, that might take a while so in the meantime you should take all the precautions you can. These precautions include: getting annual mammograms (x-ray of your chest), checking for any changes in your chest, biopsy (if you think you have it), blood marker tests, etc.

I’ll stop telling you what you can do to find it early now and start telling you how to decrease your chances! While some things you can’t change to decrease your chances like your age, genetics, sex, etc. You can; work out/try losing weight, eat nutritious foods, and stop smoking. These things aren’t certain to rapidly decrease the risk but they definitely help and everything counts when it comes to cancer!
Nobody wants Breast Cancer so, next October(or just in your everyday life) try to spread awareness by wearing pink! Also, don’t forget to support the other types of cancers or important causes by wearing their colors!