By Danielle Binks
I am guilty of doing what millions of people do in October; I choose the pink product over the regular. I've bought bottles of water with pink lids, forked out a couple of dollars for a pink silk ribbon pin and gifted pink ballpoint pens to friends. Mindless little purchases often made at the checkout counter in a snap decision, trying to do my little bit to help.
Little did I realise that this mindless naiveté at the checkout counter is part of a bigger, global capitalist problem – and it’s brilliantly explored in the must-see documentary released last year, ‘Pink Ribbons Inc.’ Directed by Léa Pool and based on the 2008 book by Samantha King, ‘Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy.’ ‘Pink Ribbons Inc’ is a “feature documentary that shows how the devastating reality of breast cancer, which marketing experts have labelled a "dream cause," becomes obfuscated by a shiny, pink story of success.”
The film delves into all aspects of the mega pink ribbon franchise, from its grass-roots origins as a salmon-coloured cloth ribbon designed by Charlotte Haley, to how Estée Lauder and Self Magazine reappropriated the ribbon (with the help of their legal team) and used a female focus group to decide on the new pink colour (thought to be comforting).
Social critics, surgeons and doctors are interviewed and there is an overwhelming consensus that while the pink ribbon campaign has succeeded in awareness, it has not managed to go beyond to the next crucial step of behavioural change. And, in fact, the awareness in itself can be detrimental, as Barbara A. Brenner – Executive Director of Breast Cancer Action in San Francisco – explains, ‘There are many people to this day who believe that if they get a mammogram, they won’t get breast cancer. They end up with breast cancer, they say “but I got my mammograms! How can I have breast cancer?” – that’s because we gave them the wrong message. It’s the wrong message – it’s that simple.’ Brenner goes on to explain that; ‘Early detection, put simply, works for some. You find some cancers early enough, they’re treatable, they get their treatments, they live a long life. For some people early detection just means finding something that will never be life threatening and we treat them anyway and then they get sick from the treatment. And for some people, early detection means you have a kind of cancer that’s so aggressive that our currently available treatments can’t help you and it doesn’t matter when we find it. That’s not hard to understand – but people don’t like that message. Everyone wants to think that they’re in the first group.’
This focus on how awareness is both a blessing and a curse to the cause was recently examined in Australia. It was revealed that Kylie Minogue’s 2005 diagnosis with breast cancer raised unprecedented awareness in the target demographic of younger women who had never before had mammograms, but this awareness was a double-edged sword because it also exposed those same women to the unnecessary risk of radiation and to the potential of false-positive results.
The film also speaks to women currently diagnosed with breast cancer, and those who have ‘fought’ the ‘battle’ and ‘beaten’ the disease. In particular, Léa Pool introduces us to a group of women with Stage Four breast cancer who are struggling with the collective pink ribbon message. These women say they are learning to die, because there is no Stage Five and no treatments for their cancer – but the pink ribbon message is about being a SURVIVOR who FIGHTS and WINS – and they fail to see how that message applies or helps them. This terminology of fighting/battling/winning insinuates that if you do ‘lose the battle’, then it’s just because you didn’t fight hard enough. You didn’t want it bad enough. There’s really not much support for women in the final stages of breast cancer – so much of the pink campaign is based around inspirational hope, survival, battling, overcoming – and so little on the reality, on coping with the worst possible scenario and living with dignity to the end. These women are not alone, and indeed you can find new support groups who deal with rebelling against what Samantha King calls ‘the Tyranny of Cheerfulness’. Take ‘The Angry Breast Cancer Survivors’, for example
These women Pool interviews are also affronted by the entire look of the pink ribbon campaign. As social critic and breast cancer ‘survivor’, Barbara Ehrenreich points out, cancer shouldn’t be pretty; ‘It’s not pretty. It’s horrible.’ But this is the bigger, capitalist picture exposed in ‘Pink Ribbons Inc’ – which is that breast cancer has become ‘the poster child of corporate cause-related marketing campaigns.’ Brenner also points out that because it’s a disease that affects women, much of the marketing is bordering on ‘sexy’, and people are thrilled at the chance to use the word ‘breast’ on daytime television.
In North America, 80% of the household buying decisions are made by women – so it’s no surprise when you start taking note of the products that are ‘pinkified’, everything from vacuum cleaners to toasters, blenders and tote bags. There have been campaigns like ‘Think Before You Pink’ which have worked to be critical of the companies cashing in on the pink cause – who take umbrage at pink handguns, but really sink their teeth into products that have inherent hypocrisy. Like KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) promoting pink buckets of hormone-injected chickens. The worst offenders of this pink hypocrisy are makeup companies who sell products containing petroleum, lead, formaldehyde, which penetrate the blood through the skin and are hazardous to your health, but many of these products are ‘pinkified’. It’s disgusting to think that Estée Lauder use chemicals linked to cancer, while promoting Breast Cancer Awareness – but they’re such a huge component of the entire pink ribbon campaign (indeed, it was their focus group who settled on the iconic pink colour) that it’s a good bet they’ll never break ties with their lucrative cause.
It’s also worth questioning if the lack of environmental cancer research is due to the very fact that so many companies would immediately have to start questioning their role in being a hindrance, not a help, to the cause. I mean, if you say we need clean air to help prevent cancer – then you can’t have an affiliation with Ford.
But what can we learn from the provoking ‘Pink Ribbons Inc’? For one thing, too many people believe that the cure is the answer – so we’re not very critical of the pharmaceutical work being carried out in the name of that cure. Again, more environmental cancer research is needed.
Everyone interviewed in ‘Pink Ribbons Inc’ is quick to point out that people on the ground of the pink ribbon cause have the best of intentions, which makes the capitalist gains that much more awful, and a manipulation of the worst kind – because they monopolize on our good intentions and our fear. On the one hand the pink ribbon campaign has not done much for the cause beyond awareness, with no behavioural change – it’s at once toothless, but still cashing in on an ultimately unsuccessful campaign, making it heartless too. As one woman with Stage Four breast cancer points out; “It’s almost like our disease is being used by people to profit. And that’s not okay.” This is very true; the pink ribbon is making breast cancer the bottom line, and people are buying it – it’s working for them, not for us.
Barbara A. Brenner agrees that this is a capitalist problem, this belief that ‘if we just throw enough money at something, we’ll understand it.’ What we now need, ironically, is an awareness campaign similar to the one pink ribbon has perfected – because “for people to rise up and object, they have to be told.” And when you see the global and pervasive movement of the pink ribbon campaign, you do realize that people want to help. They are desperate to show their support, to offer a little bit of themselves (whether it be in a fun run, or buying that pink-lidded bottle of water). We just need to direct them to the right cause. The same way the Pink Ribbon campaign hit us over the head with a sledgehammer for awareness – we must do the same thing with exposing their agenda. In this case, awareness is the most important first step.
A resounding message of the documentary is also that anger can be a good thing, when directed in a powerful way. The cheerful, upbeat, warrior-woman message of the pink ribbon campaign has some merit too – but as the women interviewed throughout ‘Pink Ribbons Inc’ repeat again and again; cancer is horrible. It’s not pretty. It’s not pretty in pink. It’s just horrible. Women should get angry that the only common factor of breast cancer is that it affects women, and that we’re no closer to find a cure or a cause. People should question where their donated money goes and what it’s doing to find cause and prevention. Women who suffer from breast cancer should not feel compelled to be cheerful, upbeat or smiling pink warriors who run/jump/walk for the cause – they should be allowed and encouraged to get angry. I would suggest that all women watch ‘Pink Ribbons Inc’ and direct their anger at the very campaign that says they have their best interests at heart – when really all they’re doing is slapping an overpriced pink bandaid on a bullet wound.
