Humorous T-Shirt.... Serious Matter

[Delphinus85]

One of my wife’s dear friends is an RN (with an additional 1/2 the alphabet in sub-specialties after it). She specializes in cancer patients.
Recently her hospital sponsored a run/walk for breast cancer. My wife’s friend came up with the idea for a T-shirt… all participants of this team would get one to wear during the walk. From what she said they were a HUGE hit, and people wanted to just buy them, and make a donation.

Like I said, this run/walk was for breast cancer… the shirts said:
SAVE 2nd BASE!!

hehehe, sorry but I love it, and I think it serves a good cause and gets the message out there in a way people will remember, even talk about over the water cooler at work. I’m gunna share this with my husband!!!

 

[Transformer]

I’m not saying ‘okay, everybody, time to rut in the streets!’ I simply think we should not be afraid of other people, that we should appreciate the beauty of the human body, and that we should laugh honestly at silly things.

In many ways, I think our opinions on the sexualization of anything and everything that goes on today are more similar than different – even if they’re coming from opposite ends of the spectrum. When I say ‘ribaldry’, I’m not talking about the degradation and exploitation one finds in tv programs (which, for the record, I do not watch – our set only gets used for video games), advertisements, and probably soon enough a toothpaste cap near you. That’s crass, disgusting voyeurism. It’s doing it wrong.

Where we differ is basically that I think there’s still a place for Bocaccio in this world. I don’t believe sex should be ‘set apart’ on some kind of pedestal – it’s fair game for storytelling, for the arts, and for humor.

I would oppose the message on the tee-shirt. Sex is set apart, albeit not on a pedestal. It’s holy; it’s supposed to perfectly reflect Christ’s love for his Church. And yet I do agree with you; sex can be used in the arts and in humor morally, and in a way that glorifies God. The problem is, the message on this tee-shirt is not merely making light of sex; it is actively glorifying the abuse and degradation of sex.

The entire baseball metaphor refers specifically to sexual conquest and using women in non-marital sex. “Getting to 2nd base” refers specifically to using a girl outside the context of marriage for sexual kicks by persuading her to let you grope her. That is horribly immoral, and glorifying it through humor is not Ok.

If using slogans like this were the only way to promote breast cancer awareness, then we’d have a serious moral dilemma here. But that isn’t the case.

God bless.

 

[otjm]

I voted “Not appropriate” and “makes light of a serious problem”.

Maybe it’s because I’m older, maybe it’s because women in my family have had breast cancer and not all the pink ribbons and ‘awareness’ and ‘cute’ sayings really get much a laugh when you’re nauseated from chemo and your hair falls out, and the LAST thing that you’re considering your breasts to be is ‘second base’.

Having had cancer, I would comment from a personal point of view: sometimes it seems that about the only thing that might keep one’s sanity is making light of something as deadly serious as cancer. Humor is a great weight loss program - losing a bit of the weight of coming face to face with one’s own mortality. And there have been more than a few studies which have shown that humor seems to have a part in the ability of a person to recover from serious, life threatening illness.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Having had cancer, I would comment from a personal point of view: sometimes it seems that about the only thing that might keep one’s sanity is making light of something as deadly serious as cancer. Humor is a great weight loss program - losing a bit of the weight of coming face to face with one’s own mortality. And there have been more than a few studies which have shown that humor seems to have a part in the ability of a person to recover from serious, life threatening illness.

God bless, otjm, and hope the recovery is permanent.

I totally agree about the use of humor. And I know that one man’s humor is another man’s pain (being addicted to the dry and punny type myself while my family is more Three Stooges and pratfalls). But both the puns and the physical humor (at least for us) are clean.

But humor does not have to be so problematic as this particular ‘slogan’. Clean humor is still the best humor.

“Save the melons” (etc) would be less of a problem, even though it ‘objectifies’ breasts somewhat; ‘second base’ OTH as another poster pointed out is not only objectifies the breasts as being ‘second base’, but that ‘second base’ is specifically designed as ‘above waist petting’ --hardly behavior which is morally appropriate for unmarried men and unmarried women for whom the slogan is designed (as well as for ‘married’ women, I suppose, to think back with nostaglia and delight over all the men they let ‘get there’, and the men too to remember with delight all the women who ‘let them’ get there–and beyond). Again, to pass this sort of behavior as ‘cute’, ‘humorous’, and totally acceptable shows just how far ‘down’ the moral high ground many have (probably without even realizing it) fallen.

Can people really picture the Blessed Mother wearing this T-shirt? Or Jesus? If not, then why would we?

(and for those who think I’m a humourless Puritan, I can picture the Blessed Virgin and Jesus in T-shirts–with pictures of the Pope, “abortion saves a beating heart”, or even ‘funny’ T shirts like “Be alert – America needs more lerts”.)

 

[Jay2]

I’d like to clarify… my wife’s friend is not associated with:
save2ndbase.com/index.htm
She made no mention of a website, or something of this magnitude… I honestly think it was just a similar idea/thought for a local cause.

What I do find interesting about the responses so far… whether you find the “slogan” humorous, cute, distasteful, disrespectful, promoting pre-marital sex, the gamut…
Everyone seems to know what “2nd Base” is, and exactly what the shirt is referring to!!
(The slogan seems to work - we are getting replies & awareness - even if it may go “against the grain” with some.