Think Before You Pink

Well, it's here. The "pink season" is upon us. Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The month when you can buy everything from pink "tweezers for life," to pink Kitchen Aid mixers, to pink soup to a pink "foldable rollator."

It makes me a little bit crazy. Partially it's the whole cute-ification of breast cancer, like it's something fun and kitschy.

Partially, it's the fact that some of these companies marketing breast cancer awareness conveniently overlook the fact that their products contain carcinogens. (For the record, these are called "pinkwashers.")

In fact:
"Breast Cancer Awareness Month, for example, is sponsored by AstraZeneca (the manufacturer of tamoxifen), which, until a corporate reorganization in 2000, was a leading producer of pesticides, including acetochlor, classified by the EPA as a "probable human carcinogen." This particularly nasty conjuncture of interests led the environmentally oriented Cancer Prevention Coalition (CPC) to condemn Breast Cancer Awareness Month as "a public relations invention by a major polluter which puts women in the position of being unwitting allies of the very people who make them sick."
(From Barbara Ehrenreich's seminal article "Welcome to Cancerland", which you can read in it's entirety here.)

Partially, it's the fact that others of these companies have incredibly vague claims on their products such as "a portion of the proceeds will go to support breast cancer awareness." What portion? Where will they go? How will they support it?

Which leads me to the Critical Questions to Ask (from ThinkBeforeYouPink.org):
1. How much money from your purchase actually goes toward breast cancer? Is the amount clearly stated on the package?
2. What is the maximum amount that will be donated?
3. How are the funds being raised?
4. To what breast cancer organization does the money go, and what types of programs does it support?
5. What is the company doing to assure that its products are not actually contributing to the breast cancer epidemic?

Partially, it's that I just don't want to be surrounded with cheerful, brightly colored reminders of a disease that has killed alot of people I care about.

Finally, it's because I really don't know what all this "awareness" is getting us. Especially when that awareness is pink-coated and sanitized.

And, just in case you think I'm crazy, I am by far not the only breast cancer "survivor" who feels this way: The Assertive Cancer Patient has collected quite a few anecdotes in her Boycott October thread. But I think the lovely and amazing Janet puts it best, "Fuck Awareness, Find a Cure."

Happy Halloween.

Addendum: I just found this anti-pink, anti-Komen rant from someone who's never even had breast cancer! Very cathartic.