Ds, fund raising and the yummy mummy

[Isthiscorrect]

Ok so this is an AIBU on behalf of DS.

He is a third year student in central London. He is fund raising for Breast a Cancer Now. Yesterday he was at a central London tube station with a fund raising bucket, dressed in a charity t shirt, and underneath the t shirt and pink feather boa he was wearing a denim shirt and chinos.

Over the course of the two hours he raised over £200. I'm pleased, he is pleased and the charity is pleased. So why did the yummy mummy abuse him with foul language and end with telling him to get a job?

He is genuinely asking the question given no one else at all was quite so rude. He isnt bothered by the langauge, he isnt a precious snowflake, he genuinely would like suggestions as to why she might have been so rude. He fund raises regularly and has never been abused like this. Thanks in advance.

brummiesue, when I'm in that exact situation it seems to send out some kind of bat signal to the Mormons that frequent the local high street to descend and ask me what I think about god, aargh!

OP, I'm surprised your son has reached this age without encountering rudeness from strangers before, I started working retail in my teens and you get it from people from all walks of life. Young, old, scruffy, done up, male, female.

I know!

He bit her, in order to establish the "yumminess". Or possibly just licked her face.

Unsuprisingly, this didn't go down well ;)

Alternatively, she's a scientist for cancer research and is utterly pissed off with the shit pay, lack of job security, and generally being treated like she should be grateful for it.

Then the evidence of how much money these charities make shoved in her face constantly, and being told it's women in pink t shirts running round a park, or someone in a pink boa, or pink generally that's going to cure cancer. When it's not, it's her and her colleagues slaving away in a laboratory.

The sight of students who've got time for what could be seen as dressing up for jolly japes for a fashionable cause - I'm not saying that breast cancer research is not needed - even if it's well meant, can be very irritating if you've been up since five for a two-hour commute to work, hard day at the coalface, your mum's just died, your DH has Alzheimer's, you can't afford to pay the electricity bill. Etc. It may not be reasonable or fair to find it irritating, but it still may be irritating.

I volunteer in a charity shop on Mondays. I work the till.
Last Monday a woman came in and her husband was standing outside. I know this because she said her husband was standing outside and I could see him standing outside.
"Do you need anybody?" she asked.
I looked quizzical.
"To work here, do you need anybody"
"I'll get the manager if you wait a few seconds"
"Well you must fucking know if you need anybody"
"No. I'm a volunteer. Only here Mondays. No idea about the other days. I'll just get....."
"Fucking idiot" she said, and she stalked out.
It's probably not the same woman and I have no idea why she was so rude - but it was pretty clear that the man did not really want a job at all, and she can't have been too bothered because she didn't want to wait and find out. She was in and out of the RSPCA shop over the road with equal swiftness. I have a feeling the jobcentre had told him that he had to try and get some sort of work for a CV? I digress.
I do that a lot.

Where is the op? I demand to know

I need the OP to come back. There is so much we need to clear up.

DJBAGGY Breast Cancer is not a female Cancer, that is only the cancers of the female reproductive organs. You just have to have breast tissue and men do, and get Breast Cancer too. The pink and fluffy gendering is society being ignorant.........

reast Cancer is not a female Cancer, that is only the cancers of the female reproductive organs. You just have to have breast tissue and men do, and get Breast Cancer too. The pink and fluffy gendering is society being ignorant

It's not. Breast cancer is exceedingly rare in men, and is overwhelmingly a female cancer. It's ridiculous to suggest that it shouldn't be represented as such. Over 50 THOUSAND cases a year in the UK in women, and about 300 in men.
Doesn't mean it needs to be pink and fluffy at all, but it is obviously targeted at women for a very good reason.

OP, I take it you're not from London yourself? As a Londoner who works in town, I'm harassed by several people nearly every day. If you walk down the average busy street, you will encounter:

• Sexual harassment
• Student charity collectors
• Professional chuggers
• People giving out leaflets for gyms etc
• Religious preachers
• Promotions staff trying to get you to sign up to the latest new hairdresser

I can quite easily be accosted by three or four people between my workplace and the station. Every day. After a while, you start saying no to everyone as a default position. I just want to walk down the street in peace. Sorry to say it, but street charity collection reached saturation point a long time ago. Londoners are often rude because we're sick of having our day interrupted yet again.

As if that wasn't bad enough, I have actually been sexually harassed by chuggers on several occasions. Maybe you could check with your DS as to exactly what language he was using.

Also look up pink marketing. Breast cancer is neither cute nor fluffy, and reducing it to a feather boa is patronising and infantilising. HTH.

Perhaps OP has evaporated in a fit of the vapours when her DS read he thread and commented "you've got it wrong mum, I meant MILF, and you forgot to mention that the conversation started so well'

Apologies for disappearing. I will try and answer all the comments and statements to the best of my ability.
Nope no infantilising breast cancer, it's very personal to Ds. I mentioned chinos just to try and indicate he wasn't being scruffy. They are not allowed to shake the bucket and yell at people. He is quite understanding of people saying no, ignoring them and doing a swerve to avoid them. Each to their own, and I think given he lives in London he also gets stopped a number of times a day so yep he understands people are tired, busy, fed up, not interested. He wasn't at Hyde Park Corner. He is totally familiar with people being rude having been a fund raiser for a number of years and working in a pub, that is not to say that only people in a pub are rude etc.
It was more about her going out of her way to rant and ending with get a job.
For what it's worth I would be the first to say what had he done to make her react like that, however in this instance, for this charity, for his personal reasons I would think, although I don't know because I wasn't there as was pointed out earlier, that he would be highly unlikely to have said anything intentionally offensive.
Sorry if I've offended anybody with this thread, that wasn't the intention, just really to find out why someone may have put so much effort into being intentionally rude.
I will emphasise to him to make sure his passion and exuberance doesn't go so far as to irritate people intentionally.
Thanks for your input.

Many years ago my mother passed away from cancer. A few days later, I had a bucket waved under my nose by a cancer charity. I declined, and was asked 'don't you care about people dying of cancer?' and I exploded. Yes, I was a cunt to her, and I'm not proud of it, but I was at the shops to buy tea and coffee to use at the wake after her funeral that day. Charity collectors who get in people's faces need to back off and realise they could be triggering for some people.

Are you asking here because we're likely to be a singe homogeneous mass of yummy mummys who all think, feel and act the same? Little sexist of you both, don't you think?

What is a yummy mummy anyway? One who is wearing make up and tidy clothes instead of looking like she's trudging through treacle where she's overcome with sleep deprivation? I actually don't know how you identify someone as a yummy mummy. It's a bloody stupid term anyway.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yummy_mummy

Apparently. It's quite silly, tbh.

I think you're both overthinking this op. Some people are just odd, you can't let them get you down.

And the yummy mummy moniker? Where does that fit in? How do you know she was a yummy mummy and what made her thus?

And do you assume us to be YM and therefore speak for "all YM"?

Erm how would we know?!

TheOnlyLiving A woman would have to be wilfully ignorant and live under a rock not to be aware of Breast Cancer. My DH found a Breast lump, had he been a woman he would have been fast tracked to a Breast Cancer clinic. Instead he was fobbed off with antibiotics for months and even when he went in to ask for a referral he was told that it wasn't necessary. He had not admitted the lump to me because of the shame and our traumatic experience of my Cancer but it was only because of that and my knowledge that he finally went in to the GP and demanded a referral. Imagine having to go to the Clinic where everything is painted pink and leaflets and posters showing women's bodies line the walls ..... Thankfully it was benign but I am quite sure men's lives are put at risk by the false tendering of Breast Cancer

gendering

As well as it getting up the noses of most women who are diagnosed....

I once told a charity collector to fuck off. He jumped out at me then followed me down the street for a good 25m telling me to 'cheer up and smile'.

I was in an abusive relationship and my ex had just called me yelling awful things about how I had to get home right now and making threats. I was also at university and had been out of the house trying to finish a dissertation.

Not saying this is the case for the woman but just showing there are a million reasons why this woman might have been rude which don't necessarily make her a terrible person. Perhaps your son just needs to learn to brush it off and stop being so self-righteous. TBH it seems like an odd question of a teenage boy to ask his Mum. Are you sure it's not just annoyed you?

Honestly I'm surprised that he went out to collect for charity on the streets and didn't expect to get some grief or hassle. That's shockingly naive to think everyone would be nice.

I am surprised there was only one 'yummy mummy' who passed by whilst the DS was collecting! Would never happen in Highgate!