Sometimes when I'm struggling to begin a writing assignment, I ask myself, "How would mom start this?"

While she was alive, my mom was a writer, not by profession but out of a sincere love for the craft. Though it doesn't work every time, thinking of how my mom would approach an assignment can usually get my creativity back in gear.

This time, though, it's a little more complicated. It's October which means it's Breast Cancer Awareness month, and I'm not quite sure how my mom -- a victim of breast cancer -- would react to a certain pertinent topic.

The piece of news in question concerns a public service announcement video. It features an attractive brunette walking around a pool in a white bikini. As she walks around in slow-motion, the camera cuts to a close up of her breasts bouncing up and down and then quickly cuts to the rest of the poolgoers taking off their sunglasses for a better look.

All the while in between these suggestive shots are cuts to the words, "You know you like them, now it's time to save the boobs."

It then cuts to that same brunette -- now with a wet, see-through T-shirt on -- who is emerging from the water like one of James Bond's femme fatales. With her nipples in clear view, she lifts up her T-shirt to reveal a "Boobyball" logo covering up her breasts.

As a heterosexual male, I have no problem with this PSA. As a son who's lost his mother, grandmother and aunt to breast cancer, I've got a huge problem with this.

According to the Huffington Post, this Canadian PSA was made to promote a charity fundraising event named "Boobyball," which hopes to inspire young adults to become aware of this disease.

The woman from the video is Aliya-Jasmine Sovani -- who apparently is relevant in Canada -- and it was her idea to take off her shirt for the camera once she found out her cousin was going to lose one of her breasts to breast cancer.

"[The video] was designed to promote a local charity... for young people under the age of 30 to get aware about a serious subject that affects women my age, but is often thought of as a 'grandma's disease,' " she says to the Post.

A 'grandma's disease'? Really?

"Young people are picking up pamphlets with a 65-year-old woman on the cover and probably tossing them out," charity Founder M.J. Decoteau said. "We're really about ... communicating the message in a fun way."

In other words, Sovani and Decoteau believe this "grandma's disease" is best presented to teens and twenty-somethings using sexual imagery, and lots of it.

Is this what it's come to? Does breast cancer awareness now need the same treatment as acne medication and fragrance commercials on MTV? We can't understand that breast cancer is a terrible disease unless we have close ups of breasts and wet T-shirts?

The intent to raise awareness is noble but horribly executed. Instead of informing its audience about prevention methods or anything pertinent at all, the ad uses sex and humor to simply remind people that breast cancer exists -- as if people under 30 didn't know that already.

I think about what my mother in her final stage of life would say about all this. Though I was only 8-years-old, I can still picture her bed-ridden, hairless from the chemo and barely able to speak. There was nothing sexy and nothing glamorous about the situation, and adding sex or humor to the equation wasn't going to help much.

I can't know for certain, but I'd like to think my mom would look at that video in all its decadence and banality, look at me and say very frankly, "Rich, this is bullshit. This isn't breast cancer."

I'd have to agree with her.