The Truth About the Pink Ribbon
Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2015 5:15 pm
[quote=http://thinkbeforeyoupink.org/before-yo ... nk-ribbon/]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.”
Of course, not everyone in the breast cancer movement thinks that commercial benefit is bad. “Avon has used the symbol to touch people’s hearts and put money back into the cause,” says Beverly Baker, executive director of the Mautner Project for Lesbians with Cancer, which receives pink ribbon funding. “I certainly wouldn’t take issue with that.”
Between 1991 and 1996, federal funding for breast cancer research increased nearly fourfold to over $550 million. And according to the American Cancer Society, the percentage of women getting annual mammograms and clinical breast exams has more than doubled over the last decade. While the Komen Foundation lost out on patenting the ribbon, it has collected millions from companies that use it and donate the proceeds. Avon, which has raised $25 million purely from merchandise, is today the largest private funder of community-based nonprofit breast cancer programs.
But signs abound that the reign of today’s ribbon is waning. When the fashion industry took on breast cancer, they made their own symbol, a blue bull’s eye, which is now in six countries. Groups on the West Coast substitute the more “powerful” purple loop. In Canada, BCA Ottawa has turned the loop upside down, for the tears shed at diagnosis and lined it with black, to remember women who have died. San Francisco’s BCA has a white-on-black button that reads “Cancer Sucks.”
For those who, like Barbara Brenner, see the pink ribbon as a red herring—and the 44,000 women dying of breast cancer each year can ill afford the distraction—the decline of the pink ribbon comes none too soon. “We have to question our willingness as cancer organizations to get into bed with people whose ultimate goal is profit, not health,” Brenner says. And her point—that corporate benevolence is linked with the appearance of care rather than active solutions—is supported by history. After all, homelessness was the darling corporate cause once, in the years before welfare reform.[/quote]
Of course, not everyone in the breast cancer movement thinks that commercial benefit is bad. “Avon has used the symbol to touch people’s hearts and put money back into the cause,” says Beverly Baker, executive director of the Mautner Project for Lesbians with Cancer, which receives pink ribbon funding. “I certainly wouldn’t take issue with that.”
Between 1991 and 1996, federal funding for breast cancer research increased nearly fourfold to over $550 million. And according to the American Cancer Society, the percentage of women getting annual mammograms and clinical breast exams has more than doubled over the last decade. While the Komen Foundation lost out on patenting the ribbon, it has collected millions from companies that use it and donate the proceeds. Avon, which has raised $25 million purely from merchandise, is today the largest private funder of community-based nonprofit breast cancer programs.
But signs abound that the reign of today’s ribbon is waning. When the fashion industry took on breast cancer, they made their own symbol, a blue bull’s eye, which is now in six countries. Groups on the West Coast substitute the more “powerful” purple loop. In Canada, BCA Ottawa has turned the loop upside down, for the tears shed at diagnosis and lined it with black, to remember women who have died. San Francisco’s BCA has a white-on-black button that reads “Cancer Sucks.”
For those who, like Barbara Brenner, see the pink ribbon as a red herring—and the 44,000 women dying of breast cancer each year can ill afford the distraction—the decline of the pink ribbon comes none too soon. “We have to question our willingness as cancer organizations to get into bed with people whose ultimate goal is profit, not health,” Brenner says. And her point—that corporate benevolence is linked with the appearance of care rather than active solutions—is supported by history. After all, homelessness was the darling corporate cause once, in the years before welfare reform.[/quote]