Smoke Pink Cigarettes, or Die of Breast Cancer

A well-deserved shot at corporate pink ribbon campaigns.

Pink Cigarettes

Lest you think the satire is a little harsh, or if you get warm fuzzies donating to pink ribbon campaigns, consider that corporations jumped all over pink ribbon campaigns not just because of their intrinsic worth, but more importantly, because it’s a “safe”, non-controversial issue, and more to generate profits. Think Before You Pink, an advocacy website, makes a necessary corrective:

She and the Times agree on the source of the disease’s peculiar popularity in corporate America. It is a quality that the breast cancer awareness ribbon both captures and enables. “Companies want to support breast cancer,” Cone says simply. “Breast cancer is safe.”

Unlike AIDS, breast cancer is free of what companies euphemistically call “lifestyle issues.” And, perhaps as importantly, breast cancer provides charitable credentials for what can be a very small investment. With the ribbon’s message of ”awareness” translating most often into a familiarity with early detection techniques, all a company has to do, to do good, is put a ribbon on its merchandise.

New Balance, for example, donates money from the sale of its Race for the Cure caps, socks and T-shirts to the Komen Foundation, but its pink ribbon sneakers, a Foundation spokesperson says, are ”just for awareness.” The sneakers have the tiny pale-pink outline of a ribbon sewn onto the corner of their tongues—difficult if not impossible for anyone except the owner to see. The possibility that those two wan loops might remind woman to get the mammogram that saves her life, however, provides the sneakers with their raison d’étre.

It is this dynamic that drives the pink ribbon’s detractors to distraction. “There is a value to awareness, but awareness of what, and to what end?” asks Barbara Brenner, activist and executive director of Breast Cancer Action (BCA) in San Francisco. “We need changes in the direction the research is going, we need access to care—beyond mammograms—we need to know what is causing the disease, and we need a cure. The pink ribbon is not indicative of any of that.”

Check out the website’s list of questions to consider before buying pink.

[Cross-posted at Those Emergency Blues]