Warped Tour Gets Busty

Keep A Breast Foundation combines art and awareness

SAN DIEGO DAILY

Some dude’s mohawk almost gouged my eye out. A desperate band cornered me with headphones and made me listen to their new album, titled Uprising. A girl walking in front of me had her hand in the back pocket of a guy who was wearing the same jeans as her. It smelled like sweat and weed. To my left: a mosh pit. To my right: an amp with the rock potential to blow my ears out of my head.

In front of me: a pink tent educating young people about the early detection of breast cancer.

Though last week’s Vans Warped Tour at Cricket Amphitheatre was probably the last place I expected to find a campaign against one of the most deadly cancers, I now believe it’s the best place for one. And so does the Keep A Breast Foundation — a global nonprofit organization that educates youngsters about the early detection and prevention of breast cancer. They had a tent at the daylong punk music festival that attracted about 50 bands and a few thousand more fans.

The foundation’s main attraction is a gallery filled with plaster castings of torsos. Famous musicians and breast cancer survivors donate their bodies as moldings for the castings and various artists then decorate them. The pieces are auctioned off, along with photography and autographed shoes to raise money for the foundation.

The castings are beautiful. Aside from the piercingly elegant and poetic artwork painted onto them, they celebrate a body part our culture tells women to hide — which totally follows the punk-rock ethos. Founder Shaney Jo Darden believes that by showcasing such an image in an artistic way, women and men will feel comfortable enough with their own bodies to perform routine self-examinations and talk to their doctors if they notice anything abnormal.

To facilitate this movement, tents set up at events such as Warped Tour offer educational brochures and information about breast cancer. Volunteers sell shirts, stickers and bags displaying logos reading “Keep A Breast is for lovers” and “Viva la breastache.” They run raffles and contests to hype up the foundation’s following and their volunteers are experienced veterans of the breast cancer awareness culture.

I came across one such volunteer named Amanda Nixon. She underwent chemotherapy and an eventual mastectomy for breast cancer when she was only 27. She survived the cancer and has since devoted her spare time to educating young women on how to prevent such an illness. Keep A Breast is the perfect outlet for her. She’s young, and everyone she speaks to is shocked at just how young she was when she was diagnosed.

Nixon confessed that when she sees a group of eight young women, all she can think about is how one of them will probably be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. Though the statistic makes her sad, it also motivates her to reach out to as many people as she can. She handed me a few brochures, showed me how to examine myself and told me to e-mail her with any questions I had.

“Anything,” she emphasized with the firmness of a concerned mother. It was obvious that she cared about my personal well-being and that I wasn’t just a potential contributor to the foundation. She, like the rest of the volunteers, simply wanted to educate and empower young women like me to check themselves regularly. This was a cancer-awareness organization I could relate to, regardless of whether I’ve been affected by it.

Darden displays the castings in her Oceanside Gallery, 530 South Coast Highway, and will be auctioning a few of them off in October, along with photography and memorabilia. keep-a-breast.org. Also, look for the Keep A Breast tent at upcoming events in San Diego.

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