October 2009

In case you somehow missed it: October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.   Basically, it means you are supposed to spend money to help find a cure. But why do we need to buy fluffy pink socks and eat pink cup cakes to raise money for much needed research? After all, breast cancer is a hideous disease, neither fluffy nor pink. Nobody expects us to buy baseball caps or bake “brownies for bombs” to fund our national defense. We have no “National Security Awareness Month.”

Our national defense and cancer research  are both about saving lives and preventing deaths.  So why then is one activity fully funded with our tax money while the other one is, to a large extent, dependent on charitable contributions from bake sales, 10K races and our purchases of “pink” products?

When it comes to various races “for the cure,” I am completely on board. It is a healthy activity, a bonding experience, and millions of dollars go straight to the coffers of those who are helping us in the fight against breast cancer.

When it comes to “buying pink for the cure” I am quite cynical.  Just a glance at the racks of shoddy pink merchandise gives me a queasy feeling of being marginalized, trivialized and commercialized. Many of the items look cheap and useless, more suited to be sold in souvenir shops at air ports, at  carnivals, or at state fairs than as items to raise funds to save women’s lives.

Worst of all, it is near impossible to figure out exactly how much of the profits will be contributed to the cause. Sometimes, a merchant will promise donations of “up to 50,000″ or “$100,000.” But what is that in percentage of profits? Is it 0.25 percent, one percent,or ten percent? More? Less?

Some products are out right insulting. Take, for example, Proctor & Gamble’s  pink cookware set designed for “Cooking Up Early Detection.”

If you buy $25 of any number of Proctor  & Gamble  products – could be anything from diapers to Tampax and Cheer detergent to Fixodent – you will get a FREE set of pink cook ware from the “Good Cook’s Hope Line.”

First, NO MENTION of a contribution to cancer research. Second, the strings attached in order to receive this free cook ware are pretty stringent, according to the coupon.

I can only assume that P&G’s  cost of manufacturing and shipping the free 10″  frying pan, the spatula and the measuring cups is off set by valuable data base information for marketing purposes.

On the back of the coupon, P&G assures me that my personal information will be “protected.” Protected from whom? Obviously not P & G, they already have my data. One also hopes that the free pink cook set has been thoroughly tested and that the items will not expose women to more carcinogens as they, full of hope, fluff up their omelets in their new pink Teflon pans.

Sadly, despite all the pink hoopla and all the billions of dollars raised over the years, we are not anywhere close to a “cure.”  Prevention is not even on the radar screen, it seems.

Since so little progress has been made. Let us demand accountability of how cancer funds are spent and on what type of research both by publicly funded cancer research by the defense department and by those organizations to which we contribute money every year. (I have a hard time imagining that breast cancer is a top priority in the department of defense. )

Finally,why is the orange October breast cancer awareness month, and not the more “feminine” and  pink month of May? If we need to stick with fund raisers and the color pink in order to fight breast cancer, let us make Mother’s Day our breast cancer awareness day. Everyone on earth had a mother at some point. What day could be more appropriate to celebrate women and as a call to arms?

Let’s march to take back our breasts from those who exploit them for profit!

Let us declare war on pink trivia !

Let us demand that women’s breasts be  deified in more than the sexual sense.

Let us be careful about to whom we issue our checks. If unsure, we can give directly to the major research centers. Five dollars to them is probably a better contribution to the cause than $25 spent on a pair of pink sweat pants that will make us look like Miss Piggy.

Let us properly fund the disease that kills up to fifty thousand of us, and disfigures many more, every year. Maybe we should declare Persephone,  the goddess of  both the underworld  and spring growth, the breast cancer goddess also. Somehow it seems befitting.

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