If you care about cancer, there’s a word you must say out loud
Did you know that 65 per cent of women are too embarrassed to say the word “vagina”? Fortunately, I’m not too embarrassed to write it, even if you might be too embarrassed to read it while you butter your toast or sip your morning tea: vagina, vagina, vagina. V-A-G-I-N-A. I’m not going to apologise for my flagrant use of this word that describes a part of the female anatomy – chances are you passed through one on your way into the world, so less redness around the cheeks, please.
I’m mentioning this because saying the word more often – instead of, say, foo-foo, front bottom or whatever else it is you do to avoid calling a spade a spade – could help to save lives. I know, I know. You’re sitting at the breakfast table, scrunching up your face in disgust, thinking “HOW? How does throwing the word ‘vagina’ at me 20 times – before I have even got to the crossword, for goodness sake! – help anybody? I was having a nice Saturday morning with the paper, thinking about planting some onion and garlic so we get a bumper crop next summer, and now my head is full of lady bits. This was not the plan at all.”
But here is why it is important: in January, an alarming piece of research revealed that more than a quarter of a million women aged between 25 and 29 didn’t have a smear test because they felt too embarrassed. What’s more, 70 per cent did not think they reduced a woman’s risk of cervical cancer. To cancer campaigners this is a source of great frustration. We are lucky – in so much as you can be lucky when it comes to cancer – that we have smear tests to detect cervical cancers. Other gynaecological forms of the disease, which affect areas such as the ovaries and the uterus, are not so straightforward.
Currently, we use blood tests to detect them, though these are not always successful – gynaecological cancers are often referred to as “silent” killers, on account of the fact that most people don’t know they have them until it is too late, and to compound matters they are then treated with medication that one campaigner described as “archaic”, with another using the term “third world”. No euphemisms there, people.
Here’s another fun “did you know?” for you: did you know that September has been Gynaecological Cancer Awareness Month? Probably not – this despite the fact that 58 women a day are diagnosed with one of these cancers, with another 21 dying of them. The only reason I did is because a friend of mine, Mika Simmons, founded something called Lady Garden (now that’s a good euphemism), which aims to raise awareness of these neglected cancers. She set it up three years ago after watching her mother die of ovarian cancer, and has since persuaded the likes of Naomi Campbell, Cara Delevingne and Suki Waterhouse to get involved with her campaign to empower women to become more aware of what’s going on in their bodies.
You will, of course, be aware that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the time of the year when we all go pink to raise funds for women affected by this awful disease. Simmons is inspired by that campaign, pointing out that 30 years ago we simply did not talk about our boobs – they were parts of the female body only to be seen in bedrooms or on the pages of Playboy magazine, and that was reflected in death rates. But today we all know how to check our breasts. We know to look for pea-sized lumps, that taking off our bra in front of our GP is an embarrassment worth experiencing if it means we get to lead long and reasonably healthy lives with our families.
When women with the disease are denied drugs that cost 43p a day – as was found this week in a report by the charity Breast Cancer Now – it makes front page news, and rightly so. Simmons hopes that, one day, there will be a similar awareness around gynaecological cancers, that all women will go straight to their GP if they experience symptoms such as bloating, back pain or changes in bowel movements.
So saying the word vagina might seem embarrassing. It might even seem crude, and it might have put you off your breakfast. But the truth is that saying the word could one day save someone you know; it could one day save someone you love. Three simple syllables, shouted loud and proud – not much to ask, really, if it means that women stop dying in silence.