A designer from Idaho who created a guide for women to recognise the symptoms of breast cancer using images of lemons has seen her work shared thousands of times on social media.
Corrine Beaumont, who lost both of her grandmothers to the disease when they were 40 and 62, was concerned when she could source very little information on the signs of breast cancer to look out for when checking her breasts, ultimately going on to create her own one, the Know Your Lemons campaign.
The citrus fruit was selected as a substitute for breasts in order to create a simple and visual way of showing what symptoms to look for without falling foul of any terms of service regulations governing inappropriate content.
Beaumont created her image of an egg carton filled with lemons as a shareable image that might help women to overcome any fears they might have of the disease. The campaign has since been used to educate people in many countries around the world and has been translated into 16 languages. The campaign has been praised for being clear and colourful, getting across its message without confounding people with lots of text.
When life give you lemons, know what to look for
“Some patients don’t want to talk about breasts or look at them,” Beaumont said. “Often women used in campaigns don’t look like ordinary women – but even those with little literacy can understand this.”
After creating the imagery some years ago, Beaumont left her job to take over the running of her charity organisation Worldwide Breast Cancer. Despite the lemons campaign existing since 2003, a recent update has found favour online after it was shared on social media by Erin Smith Chieze.
Chieze received a diagnosis of stage four breast cancer after spotting an indentation on her breast and remembering having seen it once displayed on a lemon as a sign to look out for.
“Without having seen a picture randomly with real information, I wouldn’t have known what to look for,” Smith Chieze said.
