It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, as you can tell from pink gloves worn by football players, pink drinks offered at restaurants and pink luxury items for sale wherever you look. While it’s laudable that so many industries that seem to have little to do with cancer prevention are lending a hand, some see the flood of pink as disingenuous marketing that does little to fund cancer research.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune takes a look at the phenomenon, noting that the amount of things, people and objects that have gone pink has gotten ridiculous. Dog toys, hair gel and handguns are all available in pink flavors, and there is little oversight that ensures an appropriate amount of money spent on breast cancer awareness-raising products goes toward research.
A feisty cancer survivor hones the sentiment to a fine point:
“The pink garbage cans really set me off. If a company really wants to help, write out a check. This is now more about marketing than awareness.”
A spokesperson for Susan G. Komen for the Cure notes that pink products help it fund $70 million each year in breast cancer research, saying the pink proliferation helps give people as many options to give as possible.
Pink blitz for breast cancer stirs debate [Star Tribune]
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Our ice rink tinted one surface pink for October. Hockey team played a couple of benefit games. I sneaked out and skated on it a couple of weeks ago after practice on the other rink.
It’s pretty in a long shot, but up close it looks like frozen Pepto-Bismol.
http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t206/sk8splat/Mespinningonpinkice.jpg
Penn & Teller covered this in their show “Bullsh*t”. In the 20 plus years that the pink ribbon campaign has been going on there has only been a 2% increase in the reduction of breast cancer. Many organizations that sponsor “walks” end up spending the money they make on the events themselves. I refuse to buy any pink ribbon campaign products because it doesn’t help, it just lines the product manufacturer’s pockets.
All the guns I’ve seen that are pink are always just pink for the ladies, not for breast cancer….
A few people I know just by the pink stuff because they like the pink colour!
It’s called pinkwashing, and I agree with the above lady. Here’s a nice website to go along with the article:
http://thinkbeforeyoupink.org/
I loathe the pink crap. I will go out of my way to avoid buying anything pink. If I choose to donate to a cause, I donate. I don’t need or want to wear a color to signify it.
That said, I think I shall create a new marketing scheme: Wear brown for colon cancer month!
And yet, heart disease continues to be the #1 cause of death for women in America. Too bad hearts aren’t sexy.
I get a kick out of it when I hear people say they’re “collecting money for breast cancer” or they’re “wearing pink for breast cancer”. Really? You doing cancer the favor of collecting funds for it? I wasn’t aware cancer earned a salary.
Of course, I’m not making fun of cancer. It’s horrible and I hope some day a real treatment/cure will be discovered. However, raising money and wearing pink for “awareness” isn’t doing anything. ANYTHING. Who doesn’t know what breast cancer is? Who doesn’t know they should be checked? If you want to raise money for RESEARCH, by all means, knock yourself out. But doing it for awareness is just assuming that everyone around you is a gelatinous meat sack with no concept of disease or self preservation.
Where’s all the attention to prostate or testicular cancer?
Why so much focus on breast cancer?? Oh wait, that would be because they are boobies….
Would they still use pink if she had died of colon cancer??