The Big Pink Lie

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The pink ribbon has become the symbol of Breast Cancer Awareness, and October has become the month of Pink: pink ribbons on people and cereal boxes, yogurt and tee shirts, and pink sneakers, pink lipstick, pink tote bags, and on and on.

The pink ribbon was created in 1991 by Evelyn Lauder (wife of Estee Lauder's Leonard Lauder) and Alexandra Penney, then-editor of Self Magazine. It became an icon very quickly and as every icon does sooner or later, it caught the attention of savvy marketing people. Breast cancer mostly affects women. Most companies market to women.

Enter the corporations. Enter 24-hour cable, e-zines and blogs. And enter greedy scam artists everywhere.

Buy this box of cereal, the company tells us, and we will give ten cents to a breast cancer charity. The fine print says they'll give up to $20,000 and they sell that much on the first day of October, but those special Pinked boxes stay on the shelves and we buy them because the company tells us we're doing something good, when it's really all about increasing their profits.

Send in yogurt lids and we will donate, says the yogurt manufacturer, making us believe there is someone sitting there counting them, but the company won't even say how they handle the lids. Some people theorize they throw them in trash bags and weigh the trash bags. Some think they hire temps or other companies to deal with it. Others think they just throw them out, period. Think of all the envelopes, the plastic lids themselves, the stamps, the trash -- the carbon footprint. And a growing number of people, including women with breast cancer and survivors, are also upset that the very containers the yogurt comes in may contain carcinogenic chemicals. It's so simple and so cynical: Eat our yogurt and help cure breast cancer.

But no, the truth is: Eat their yogurt and you're helping sell their yogurt. Sure they give away money, a set amount, relatively miniscule compared to their profits, and they get to write it off. They would have given it anyway. But the money for the October campaign comes from their advertising budget. Each year they create a sense of urgency about the donation in order to make it seem like you need to eat that yogurt right up until October 31st and send in that lid or they won't meet their goal, but that's not the case.

In the past few years more and more companies have found a way to squeeze even more profit out of Pink, by cutting back on expensive ads and using bloggers to get the message out. 2009 estimates are that the number of women in the blogosphere is anywhere from fifteen to forty million. Companies have learned they can give a hundred thousand bloggers the same cheap giveaways for less than the price of one television commercial. The bloggers get a gift for themselves along with a giveaway that is fun and may increase traffic on their blog, and they get to feel good, sincerely believing they are helping an important cause. But the only thing they're helping to boost is the companies' bottom line.

We are good people (well, most of us, right?) Breast cancer is all around us. We have mothers and children, friends and coworkers who have it or have had it. We fear for ourselves. Pink gets deep into our minds: Buy the lipstick and I can save a life. maybe even my own. Sure, I'll take the lipstick -- and the nail polish, the tee shirt, the sunglasses, the sneakers. It's a perfect way to motivate us to buy buy buy.

And then there are the tons of just plain scams, where no money is ever even donated. October Pink is a come-hither invitation to scam artists. Last week a friend bought me an adorable pink tote bag that supposedly benefits breast cancer research and treatment. I very much doubt it. There are too many people and companies ready to prey on our good hearts or frightened souls. There are too many examples to mention, large and small, so here's just one.

As for the charities, well, some of them spend way too much money getting their money. Charities that once were small have grown and now they spend tons on overhead, on things like marketing themselves.

Increasingly, women are rebelling against the October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month concept and the commercialization of Pink, women like Jeanne Sather, whose web site is theassertivecancerpatient.com and who sports a tee shirt that says F&ck Awareness, Find a Cure. She's part of a growing group, and the media is taking notice in articles such as Newsweek's "Seeing Red in Pink Products: One Woman's Fight Against Breast Cancer Consumerism" and the Boston Globe's "Sick of Pink."

Ironically, at the same time some women are arguing against the pink ribbon mentality, other people are trying to get other diseases to muscle in on Pink's territory. I just learned that the cancer I had has a teal ribbon, my sister's orange, which also signifies (among other things) attention deficit disorder, animal protection awareness and the Ukranian Revolution. Look at this list of ribbons. White for gender violence, black for melanoma, gray for asthma. When everything means something, then nothing means anything.

Ribbons, nail polish, tee shirts, well-being, lipstick, ice cream, flowers, earrings: It's so easy to pick out what's important on the list. We need to keep that in mind when the full force of corporate greed is upon us each October, and spend our time and money accordingly.


(This post is dedicated to my dear friend Annie, who only two days ago found out that for the second time in ten years she is free of breast cancer.)