Academy Award-winning filmmaker Taika Waititi is on a mission to make breast checks harder to forget by embedding them in every woman’s shower routine.
Save your life – Rinse & Repeat is a deliberately steamy short film for Breast Cancer Foundation NZ, starring actor Xavier Garneau-Roughan, who seductively rubs his pectorals while urging women to also feel their breasts while they shower.
Behind the playful creative is a serious behavioural challenge.
Breast Cancer Foundation NZ found that while almost all New Zealand women surveyed aged 20 to 44 (94 percent) agreed regular breast checking is important, 82 percent said it was easy to forget.
Only 37 percent had checked their breasts within the previous month, while one in eight said they had never checked for changes.
For Taika Waititi, the creative response was simple: make breast self-checking something women are unlikely to forget.
Cue steam, a very good-looking actor and one straightforward message: make checking your breasts part of the shower routine.
The idea also built on an existing behaviour. More than half of women surveyed who had checked their breasts said the shower was where they last did it. Yet nearly seven in ten said nothing in their normal routine currently reminds them to check.
“Breast cancer has affected many people in my life, including my mother and mother-in-law, so my involvement in this project was never in question,” he said.
“We set out to create something entertaining that also carries an important message – check your breasts.”
Vanessa Sorenson, CEO of Breast Cancer Foundation NZ, added that Taika has an extraordinary ability to take a serious subject and make people stop, watch and talk about it, and that is exactly what we needed here.
“The shower gives us a moment that already exists in everyday life, and Taika has turned it into something memorable enough to prompt women to check.”
Breast Cancer Foundation NZ has encouraged women to become familiar with the normal look and feel of their breasts and make checking part of an existing routine.
