Pink
ribbons, pink cars, pink kitchen mixers, pink vacuum cleaners, pink knives and
now, pink guns?
Don’t get me wrong. I have no objection to breast cancer-awareness
campaigns in and of themselves; it is a worthy cause that may help save some lives
by spotlighting the importance of early screening and does bring emotional
support and fellowship to many suffering from breast cancer.
What truly bothers me is that the movement has morphed into a commercial behemoth - a massive money-making, cash-raking
frenzy that makes the month of October look like someone hosed it down with
Pepto-Bismol. At nearly every fundraising event and in every related media
campaign you see evidence of massive corporate sponsorship. There’s Ford Motor
Company’s “Warriors in Pink” clothing line, entire Japanese trolleys wrapped in
ads for Avon’s pink-beribboned product line and Yoplait’s “Put a Lid on It,” for
example. Here’s a spot of bitter irony: when Yoplait first launched that campaign,
they were making the yogurt with dairy from cows injected with a growth hormone
that has been linked to breast cancer. At least General Mills pulled the hormone
from Yoplait after activists started making noise about it.
With the seemingly endless millions flowing to this movement, it’s
clear that some are profiting big. But are we really any closer to finding the
elusive cure? I recently wrote about Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s disastrous attempt to pull Planned Parenthood’s funding – which the group uses to provide
potentially life-saving breast-cancer
screenings to low-income women. Wow. Just, wow.
Another gripe with the pink-ribbon overkill is that it overshadows so
many other worthwhile causes and nonprofits – groups that do incredibly
valuable and needed work in their communities – that are barely noticed and
chronically underfunded. At the ThinkTank, the arm
of ThinkInk that works with nonprofits. Unfortunately for many of them, their
funding dried up as the recession struck and donations dwindled, forcing them
to eliminate PR – which is what keeps them in the public eye – from their
meager budgets.
It’s heartbreaking that so many great community programs delivering
vital services such as medical care for the poor, food assistance and transitional
housing, but lacking the visibility of the charity giants, languish in
obscurity.
I absolutely support raising funds for breast cancer research as well
as early-screening awareness, and I have nothing but good wishes for the many
women who have survived, or are currently battling, breast cancer. But the
actual impact of the movement as it
stands today hardly seems commensurate with the eye-popping river of money it
pulls in.
So let’s try and find other causes, other non-profits that desperately
need our help in order to help others.
Because their missions matter too, you know?
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