This isn’t your mother’s breast cancer awareness campaign.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and as a result you may have seen a lot of pink ribbons floating around. That’s cool and all, but another campaign just wants you to touch yourself.

“This October, Women’s Health + F*ck Cancer want you to Touch Yourself. Seriously! Not only is it entertaining, it can also save your life. 90% of cancer is curable if caught in stage one. So, take the pledge to Touch Yourself and tell all the women you love to get handsy too.”

Here’s how you make breast cancer awareness go viral: the Touch Yourself campaign has its own Facebook app, which asks people to take the pledge to self-screen or get screened. Once someone takes the pledge, they’re asked to share a “postcard” with their Facebook friends to spread the message.

Guys, you can participate too. Once you pledge, you can choose a postcard fit for a woman or one fit for a man. After you send postcards, the app lets you see your impact – or just how many people you’ve “activated to touch themselves.”

If you’ve never heard of F*ck Cancer, it’s an alternative cancer awareness organization that takes a more agressive approach to the disease. And seriously, who can argue their message – f*ck cancer, indeed. Here’s what Founder and CEO Yael Cohen had to say about why the organization was formed:

“Why didn’t I just support an existing charity? I thought about it, hard. But ultimately, I found most existing cancer organizations were research-focused, which is incredibly important, but not my fight. I’m not a researcher so couldn’t contribute scientifically and couldn’t raise the billions of dollars needed to find a cure. I can, however, change the way society perceives cancer; from something we wait to get and pray there’s a cure to something we’re actively working to prevent, actively looking for and finding when it’s most curable.”

If you’ve ever known someone affected by breast cancer, or any other cancer for that matter – you know how important early detection really is. This is a campaign for a good cause, with a little bit of bite to it. So touch yourself, and tell others to do the same.

[via Mashable]