If you are part of the female persuasion, you may be in luck.
Around 99 percent of breast cancer cases occur in women each year.
Prostate cancer is an entirely male problem. Women don’t get it. Ever.
Still, life is tough, and prostate cancer, with its sick sense of good real estate, claimed some 27,000 fine men last year in the U.S.
Breast cancer claimed around 40,600 last year, almost entirely women.
We all know our best solutions come from our government, and the No. 1 solution to any problem is to throw money at it as fast as possible.
Remember Uncle Sam’s rule of thumb: It’s only feeding the fire if you use a little bit of cash, but a whole lot will smother it.
The National Cancer Institute is the government’s go-to group for this sort of thing. Last year it received $293.9 million for prostate research, while breast cancer had to scrape by on $599.5 million.
Times are tough.
In case you’re interested, we can use these numbers to put a price on each male and female death last year. If your dad, brother, or grandpa dies of prostate cancer, the government values that at $10,741.96, or one 2006 Ford Taurus.
Mom, sissy and grammy’s deaths came in at $14,762.37 last year, a 37 percent increase from the value of grandpa’s death.
To say that this is reverse sexism isn’t enough. It’s just plain sexism, and it has rooted its way through our legal and political system for years.
This isn’t really about politicians’ explicit preference for pretty young girls (and hotel rooms). This is about marketing.
Consider this: Every day, nearly 307 million ads walk around our streets for breast cancer, not including cute bags, T-shirts, bumper stickers and fiendishly cute hoodies.
As men, we just can’t compete.
But breast cancer advertises its cause better — no contest. Some of the most popular breast cancer slogans I have found are, “Save a life, grope your wife,” followed by, “Yes my boobs are fake, my real ones tried to kill me” and finally, for those who have undergone chemotherapy, “I’m too sexy for my hair.”
Imagine the difference in your response to the “I’m too sexy for my hair” slogan. A woman walks into the room wearing the shirt and without hair, and we feel bad for her — and understandably so. A woman’s hair and breasts are quintessential symbols of her femininity.
Now put that same shirt on a middle-aged man entering the room. That’s just gross. Nobody wants to see a balding man wearing a T-shirt about his prostate cancer. Nobody.
Two top slogans I found for prostate cancer: “Don’t procrastinate, check your prostate” and “It’s never too late to check your prostate.”
Those may be lame, but you try to do better.
Still don’t believe me? What’s the ribbon color for breast cancer? Surely you know it’s pink. But what about prostate cancer?
Intuitively, you might think it’s brown, but no, it’s blue.
Don’t worry, I had to look it up, too.
Imagine you’re hired to make a TV commercial for breast cancer. You show some trophy wife running through the park, flaunting skimpy sport shorts, a matching tank top and an iPod on a designer armband. Overlay it with a good message, an inspirational call to action and a number at the end to text. Done.
Marketers have two nightmares these days: getting hired for something like prostate cancer ads, and working for BP.
They say cancer is a word, not a sentence. But if you do get the word, pray that you’re backed by women’s — not men’s — government funding. If men in America can’t get  better support for medical research, let’s at least push for a more comfortable exam, one that doesn’t require gloves.
Devin Graham is a 21-year-old business management senior from Prairieville. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_dgraham.
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Contact Devin Graham at [email protected]