I was suspicious of them early on, though I wasn't quite sure why. Perhaps its that pervasive and cloying "pink means female" message. We suffer from a "cute" femmy disease and wear sweet little ribbons to prove it. Barbie should wear one!
After watching several friends and relatives die from the disease, I distanced myself even more from the pink parade. My loved ones weren't simply ravaged by cancer; they were ravaged by the treatments for cancer, which seemed hoisted upon them by an all-knowing healthcare industry, for whom I was growing increasingly skeptical. Why find a cure for something when you're making so much damn money from it? Wear a pink ribbon instead.
And there was the convenience factor. Buying a box of Lean Cuisine or a bucket of chicken with a pink ribbon on it hardly seemed like a good deed for the day. "Pinkwashing" became the name of the game, where companies hijacked a cause for profit and PR.
Because sodium-laded soup only causes heart disease.
But the ribbons, they're about awareness, I've heard repeatedly. Have people not heard of the disease? Oh yes, we should perform self-examinations. And we should get our routine mammograms (where radiation may contribute to the problem) and we should, well, just be aware! Look, even the football players are aware!
My agent told me to wear it!
Unfortunately, awareness hasn't necessarily equated with action or success. Incidence rates are higher than they were 30 years ago. Awareness also hasn't included outing companies that flagrantly use cancer-causing agents in their products. Or our meat and dairy pumped with hormones and antibiotics. Or genetically modified foods. Or polluted air and water. Awareness hasn't included any alternative treatments for cancer, which are barely recognized because Big Pharma makes sure they keep their traps permanently and legally shut.
Smith & Wesson's Pink Breast Cancer Awareness 9 mm pistol, when ribbons just aren't cutting it.
Instead, breast cancer awareness includes yogurt, Tupperware parties and cosmetics (again, possibly the cause, not the cure). Noble folks "race for cures," raise substantial funds, and then promptly hand it over (potentially) to the corporations benefiting the most from keeping us sick.
Eat the cancer-causing hormones in the yogurt and donate to finding a cure to your own disease. 
Wow. No sarcastic caption needed.
When I stumbled across Think Before you Pink, my concerns were validated and more clearly defined. They do a much better job of describing the potential damage of the pink ribbon campaign.
Their mission:
"Think Before You Pink™, a project of Breast Cancer Action, launched in 2002 in response to the growing concern about the number of pink ribbon products on the market. The campaign calls for more transparency and accountability by companies that take part in breast cancer fundraising, and encourages consumers to ask critical questions about pink ribbon promotions."
Have lives been saved by supporting the pink ribbon campaign? Undoubtedly, indirectly or directly. Awareness (and millions) have been raised.
Now to step it up a notch and see who is behind this research, where your donations are going, what's really making us sick, and how people benefit from keeping you that way.
Oh...and Barbie does wear pink ribbons. I should have known.
A fictitious ad, but drives home the point.
Thanks to greenheron for her personal account on this topic: "Cancer Bitch."
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Comments
Rated.
(Neil's comment is pretty awesome too.)
HUGGGGGGGGG
This was excellent, but so damned depressing.
rated (but not with a pink ribbbon)
2. Agreed on the overpinking of society. Like you, I had an organic distaste for it from the beginning, but I chalked it up to something oppositional in me. You're right that it provides a facile, condescending pat on the head when actual action is instead required.
3. Something about this sentence felt a little too conspiracy minded to me: "Why find a cure for something when you're making so much damn money from it?" I don't think it's as sinister as all that. I'm big on science, and I simply don't think the cure is out there, hiding for lack of exposure. I think it will out itself eventually through good scientific research.
With everyone looking for the cure, the causes may be sprinkled all around us and the observations there for anyone who wants to look, to see. Can we handle it if the boogey-man turns out to be something we willingly are doing to ourselves?
Read this article, and do a "find" on the word "cancer" in it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Rated.
It pisses me off to no end how well-meaning people go to extreme lengths to raise money for cancer research while drug companies spend bazillions of dollars advertising stuff like ED pills, like it’s noble work making the world safe for four-hour erections. Where are the marches and races and marathons to raise money for low-performing penises?
The chemicals that go into what we eat are frightening. People are either too lazy or made to think they are too busy to eat healthy meals, that their only reasonable choice is processed crap or fast food. How have the rates of cancer and diabetes and high blood pressure, etc., fared with the increase of consuming fast food and Big Ag products laden with chemicals?
In the end, it’s all about money. Someone’s making a lot on all this, and it’s not the 99 percent.
I think we would benefit more from increased awareness about what is making us sick, and measures to protect our environment and ensure a healthier food supply, so that more of us could potentially AVOID getting breast cancer and other serious illnesses.
a little reworking
of "lately ive seen her ribbons & her bows
fallin from her curls"
always is my naughty temptation.
too much of anything saturates the mind.
yah yah another ribbon.
then we get angry about the overabundance,
as if we wuz stupid & didnt know breast cancer is a terrible thing.
like, um, lou gehrigs disease.
or autism
Perfect..
they're twin bombshells, your post and heron's. rant on, jersey woman.
http://open.salon.com/blog/toritto/2011/10/04/reflections_on_think_pink
R
Pink ribbons...hmmmph.
(also, getting mammograms have nearly zero effect on the rate of prevention. the single biggest factor - being rich.
Go make more money ladies. your boobies are counting on you)
Thanks for a very insightful article.
I'm waiting for 'cop a feel for the cure' or 'fuck for the cure'.
Pink ribbons? Not so much.
Also, congratulations on the EP. I wondered if Cancer Bitch was too provocative for the cover, or too tied to a licensed character (pink Spongebob Squarepants), or perhaps I've found my way to the OS black list for flagging the post by the editor's friend, the woman who soothes herself by killing animals.
Whatever. Think Before You Pink.
The corporations get behind causes for the obvious reason of tax breaks and selling products to consumers who buy the line. It breaks the monotony of over-exposed product design and brand labeling. It seduces buyers into the euphoria of embracing the unfamiliar, and the chance that $ goes to serve others.
You make a clear case for the hypocrisy of it all. The candidates debate on TV, then "Truth Investitgators" go on the radio, giving their analysis on the degree of truth the candidate told.
In my world, there are consequences for lying...but I'm just a guy...
While I realize that some people feel that they owe their (continuing) lives to early detection and treatments treatments treatments ... it is entirely possible that they would have been just fine, and lived just as long without it. And with all their original equipment.
Apparently, all of us have some cancer somewhere, at various times in our lives that is dealt with by our own immune systems. If the snapshot of 'screening' what's going on at that specific time is one of those moments ... well, all aboard the crazy train.
Additionally, if the cancer is one that exceeds your immune system's capabilities, odds are it is going to succeed, regardless of how many 'battles' you 'win'.
Years ago I came to grips with the notion that something is going to get me, no matter what. Nothing pains me more than watching those I love continue to suffer the tender ministrations of the health care system, stealing their remaining time and filling it with their endless required appointments, and all the rest. It never ends. Dragging out the misery and lying about how much better they are doing just to keep them coming back. Not to mention the elevated stress levels for everyone that precede every " followup"
I find it cruel, and tragic ... but again, follow the $$$$.
I have absolutely no trust in the system. I wish for my own departure from this earth to be a surprise trip- not an escorted excursion.
But.
Regarding corporate $, it's the imaging lobby.
Imaging is the single most profitable part of medicine.
A lot of people have very minor symptoms, get checked, have the problem (whatever is being screened for) and then sort of forget that they weren't part of the general population.
In fact, you have:
1. People that are going to die from something/anything else before the screened disease kills them.
2. People that are going to die pretty soon regardless.
3. People that die driving to the appointments -- or the rough equivalent -- a single life is priceless in theory, but in practice, the cost of the time/money amounts to pieces of a person's life.
4. The people that will be treated damn near to death to eke by the 5 year mark, with low quality of life. They call it success, but it is partial at best.
5. And then sometimes it works! Not against screening in theory. It's all a cost/benefit. There is more PR for the benefits than pointing out costs.
But, really. Being a guy, I don't really need to have an opinion. And don't wan't to argue with a woman on this. They have a point of view that isn't simply theoretical.
I could say that I feel their pain, etc. but how could I? It totally sucks.
I have issue with foods wrapped in pink and white packaing, unless they are peppermints. There is nothing short of starvation that would incite me to enjoy them. There is that all so popular food group ‘Pepto Bismal” that sports this now trendy affect. Perhaps I am reluctant because of it.
I am an artist, and I have well over 1000 pencils and half as many paints and I find I have a abnormal amount of this color in spare, due to the fact, I never use it.
“Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.”
― Italo Calvino
Beth, is there really a gun with that logo?
Rated love D
You have a way with words that tells the tough stuff while I nod my head, maybe laugh, definitely want to read more....
Faced with overwhelming evidence, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has finally gotten around to admitting that prostate cancer screening for men is a waste of time. Why are they continuing to foist useless interventions on women?
My stepchildren lost their mother to this disease. I lost my best friend to it a few years before that loss. The pink washers can all go fuck themselves and the medical industrial complex that tortured the hell out of my friend Maureen deserves a special level in hell for what they put her through for no good purpose. She was a Public Health Nurse who started a hospice where there was none before and she deserved better for the portion of her life she dedicated to the health of the dying and to teen mothers.
Three of the stepkids went right out and got pink ribbon tattoos when their mother died. It pisses me off every time I see one of those damned tattoos. I wish they had just tattooed her name, "Nancy" somewhere. That would have meant something more personal about her than the damned market that built up around her death. But I am merely a stepmother and so I had to keep my loud, bilious mouth shut.
I do know the medical combine for what it is...
We need more skeptics and cynics.
However, to address the point that the pharmaceutical companies have no interest in curing cancer --- that's bunk. A company that patents a sure cure with minimal side effects will rake in billions. Breast cancer is a common and deadly disease, meaning plenty of patients who will pay a lot to be cured.
I am not impressed with good intentions. I am impressed with action. Peace out.
The same thing has happened to the environmental movement. Its called "green-washing." They say X will support the environment and its just a manipulative advertising stunt. They know a large demographic subsection of the population is mindlessly committed to the green-cause. As such, you attach product or practice X to the green cause, and the people will do it, mindlessly, even if it actually has nothing to do with the environment.
Hotels do this all the time, by saying you are helping the environment by re-using your dirty towels, which is bullshit. In fact, they just don't want to hire extra people to do the labor to collect the towels, refold them, and restock them. If you study the hotel industry, there hasn't been a dent at all in terms of their laundry-bill costs, with this practice. There has been a major dent, though, in terms of their labor costs.
By pink-washing their companies, major corporations can be seen as "progressive" and "compassionate" when in fact they are just corrupt, abusive, exploitive dens of capitalist greed.
Look at all the pro-bono work these companies engage in. Its all social work. None of it really addresses the root-causes of poverty. Why? Because they have a direct role in causing such poverty. That's why. They distract us from their inherent evil by endorsing collateral, progressive causes.
I also don't wear pink ribbons or place any stock in buying products with pink ribbons on them. I don't think that method of raising awareness is any more effective than a word with your primary care doctor or a campus- or neighborhood-wide information drive. And once you're aware, what else can you really do except be screened as you and your doctor see fit?
However, there is a huge and unnecessary jump between being skeptical of those practices and being blithely (or bitterly, it's your choice) dismissive of everything connected with attempts to treat breast cancer. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. In all branches of medicine, for all diseases and disorders, specific treatments are offered when their expected benefit is greater than their cost (in money, side effects, and lifestyle changes). As I said before, it is up to the patient to choose the treatment out of the options her doctor lays out, and no treatment is an option. Incidence rates for a disease will increase when more people are screened for it, because more cases that would have gone unseen will be identified. They will also increase when mortality rates from other diseases decrease and when age of mortality increases - so congratulations, America, you're living longer and you're dying less from other diseases compared to 30 years ago!!
If you want to get more bang for your fundraising buck, check where your money is going before you donate. Unscrupulous manufacturers certainly may sponsor less-than-rigorous research that obscures their products' potential role in promoting cancer, but work with organizations that aren't tied to such biased parties. As for Big Pharma, they have their own sources of money and don't need your fundraising dollars; that's why once they get a drug that works, they charge you so much for it - to recoup their considerable research costs. Better yet, nobody is stopping you from sending your donations directly to the National Institutes of Health for them to distribute to academic researchers through grants. You can even send money indirectly by putting pressure on your Congressional representatives to direct more of your tax money to the NIH. While you're at it, put pressure on them to fund the regulation they've asked the FDA, EPA, USDA, and OSHA to do so that the pollutants stay out of our environment, our food and water stay pure, and drugs that are effective and safe are approved in a timely manner. There is more to do than wring your hands and cry foul at everybody.
Actually, more women die of lung cancer -- but, what color is a lung?
Smith & Wesson: take a shot at breast cancer.
"Throughout October, NFL games will feature players, coaches and referees wearing pink game apparel, on-field pink ribbon stencils, special game balls and pink coins."
Because we know how sensitive football players are to women's needs.
Love the cigarette ad!!!
A friend of a friend decided to do the Walk, she had to pledge to raise $2,300. That is apart from the $75 registration fee. If she is unable to raise the money they will kindly debit her credit card, which she had to provide. The whole bloody thing is a monstrous scam, imho.
The whole article is at http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/cancerland.htm