'Topless in Rio' Project: Brazilian Women Raise Breast Cancer Awareness by Removing Their Bikini Tops in Ipanema Beach

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According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with the exclusion of some kinds of skin cancer, breast cancer is still the most common cancer among women of any race or ethnicity in the United States today. It is the most common cause of cancer-related death among women from Latin America. But, absurd as it may sound, the topic is still considered taboo in the Brazilian society.

And now, a group of women has gone against the local laws to change things around. As part of the "Topless in Rio" project, about a dozen of them went half-naked on the widely popular Rio de Janeiro's Ipanema beach on Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016, in order to raise awareness of breast cancer in Brazil.

According to a report from Fox News Latino, project founder and president Ana Paula Nogueira told EFE that the primary goal of their event's theme, "No Woman Should Live without Breasts," is to provide "more freedom and making the feminine body natural" by removing their bikini tops.

"The idea behind going bare is to lay bare a series of other issues, other prejudices. We use going topless to draw attention to matters that people should really be concerned about," she also added.

The bold move from the participants who joined the project can lead to their imprisonment for going against the law against topless sunbathing. The women could be looking at a jail term of about three months up to a year.

Contrary to popularly held belief, breast cancer can also strike among the male population. The CDC estimates that in 2012 there were about 224,147 women and 2,125 men in the U.S. diagnosed with breast cancer. And, more than 41,000 women and 405 men lost their lives from the battle against the dreaded disease.

"Male breast cancer is not uncommon and must be taken seriously," according to the WebMD. "The first sign of breast cancer often is a breast lump or an abnormal mammogram. Breast cancer stages range from early, curable breast cancer to metastatic breast cancer, with a variety of breast cancer treatments."

And just like any cancer, it's difficult to tell for sure what could be the cause of one's breast cancer. Some of the risk factors include age as the risk increases as a person gets older, family history, genetics wherein some carriers of a particular gene are more at risk, and the presence of breast lesions.