Pink Ribbon
Blues: How Breast Cancer Culture Undermines Women's Health
Gayle Sulik
Oxford University Press, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-19-974045-1
402 pages
Pink Ribbon Blues is a
difficult book to read, but I'd like to see it become required
reading for any student in sociology. Gayle Sulik has taken some
brave steps to bring into focus, not only a sacred cow, but the
elephant in the room -- corporatization reaching even into one of our
most well respected charity organizations.
Every chapter has
well-researched and copious footnotes. For those of us used to
reading books that let us look through someone else's eyes and hear
the stories of individuals told, it does seem a bit on the cold
academic side, but the picture that emerges as the book goes on is
far more chilling. I believe all the documentation in this case is
critically important, because when an author takes on a non-profit
not only with some serious political and socially well-connected
associates, but with a host of high-powered corporate sponsors and
donors, she needs to have her facts straight.
Pink Ribbon Blues describes
an environment that is disturbingly similar to “regulatory
capture,” a situation in which corporations become very close to
those who regulate them, in an attempt to keep from being too closely
watched. The increasing popularity of the highly visible “Race for
the Cure” and the “pink ribbon culture” that it has spawned,
provides a platform, as well as a huge potential market, for
corporate, medical, and pharmaceutical interests. It seems that
“pink ribbon culture” may be slowly mutating into a culture that
could be harmful to patients and survivors of breast cancer.
One would have to be living
in a cave, well away from all society, to miss seeing the amazing
level of merchandising of breast cancer “pink ribbon culture”
that emerges every October, designated National Breast Cancer
Awareness Month, an event so over-the-top that it's been re-dubbed
“Pink-tober.” Auto makers sell pink cars, football players wear
pink gloves and shoes, and everywhere you look, there's some trinket
being sold along with the message “some portion of the sales will
be donated to the SGK (Susan G. Komen) Race for the Cure” (the rest, of course,
goes to sales). Pink ribbons are everywhere, and are even
copyrighted.
The hardest part of reading
all this is that all of us have friends and/or family who have either
had breast cancer, have friends who have it, or who have participated
in the Race for the Cure as either survivors or as women determined
to keep this disease from harming their lives or someone else's. The
race and it's promoters have attained a saintlike status, and people
feel extremely protective of a group that spends so much time and
effort donating money to research, so books like “Pink Ribbon
Blues” (there are more than a few) cause an instant emotional
blow-back, making them immediately controversial and subjecting their
authors to a certain amount of heated animosity.
But Sulik raises some
important questions. Why is there no good way to see how much of the
hundreds of millions in donations have been allocated? Why are
events geared to raising money for the Foundation, which then
dispenses it to research, instead of providing information about the
many other organizations providing direct services to patients and
their families, and the research organizations that are constantly
seeking funds? Why do they consider the image of the “she-roe”
breast cancer survivor, who still manages to keep her trophy-wife
good looks and social status in spite of her illness, so critical
that they would let Mattel make a “Pink Ribbon Barbie Doll” to
promote the cause? Is “pink ribbon culture” becoming a
self-perpetuating organization which is primarily a free-advertising
moneymaker for it's donors?
As a medical sociologist,
Sulik raises an even more distressing question. Some well-respected
medical organizations have doubts, and admit that mammography is not
only less beneficial than advertised for early diagnosis (with many
false positives) but, for those with genetic predisposition to breast
cancer, possibly dangerous, since even small amounts of radiation can
increase their risk. So why does “The Cure” continue to insist
that in order to be safe women should get them every year? Why are
none of the risks mentioned in their literature?
In recent years, even the
American Cancer Society has acknowledged a lack of investigation into
the environmental causes of cancer, yet there are donor companies who
“pink wash” their image by making sure the public sees how much
they donate to the “pink ribbon” cause, and notice far less about
what products they are making and their potential environmental
impacts.
Big Pharma companies like
Astra Zeneca and others (some making chemotherapy products used in
the treatment of breast cancer) are closely affiliated with “The
Cure” and this conflict of interest does not go un-noticed as
“alternative” medical options are thoroughly pooh-poohed in SGK
literature, while current and new medical “advances” from the
pharmaceutical and medical instruments corporations are touted as the
last best hope.
In the reality beyond the
social events, with the focus on the “she-roe” who can go through
chemo while looking great with a smile on her face, volunteering for
more and more “pink ribbon” events (at which she, as the
survivor, is honored), what the pink ribbon culture does, is ignore
the fact that most women do not fall into a social category that
makes this possible. Those trying to raise a family, continue
working, and deal with the exhausting realities of chemotherapy and
radiation, are not really seen clearly. Those survivors of color,
those with minority group status, and those with financial hardships,
are invited to join the ranksof the activist survivors, but for them,
the pressures of adding activism to their already overloaded lives
can be overwhelming and destructive to their already stressed health;
they often don't have the financial resources and free time. The
ugly realities of cancer, which are documented in many books and
poems, are ignored in a movement that is slowly becoming a media
front to make the disease seem less deadly and more “transformative.”
“The centrality of cheerfulness as the primary way to survive
cancer succeeds in blaming the diagnosed for getting cancer in the
first place, limiting women's personal self-expression to sanctioned
cultural scripts that support the cancer system, and giving society
at large the opportunity to look away from the realities of modern
living that give rise to cancer and illness, such as environmental
causes and profit motives within the medical system that preclude any
real investment in prevention.”
Every year more women face a
life that must deal with breast cancer, and for all the hype, not
much in the way of actual progress has emerged from this approach,
nor is it likely to emerge so long as the “feel good” psychology
and focus on practices known to be insufficient continue. Smaller,
more service-oriented groups are being pushed out as large,
well-financed, fashionably-socially-conscious, groups take the
spotlight, along with their sponsors pink products.
As I said, it's a hard book
to read. It's depressing to think that something that we all want to
see succeed is slowly being steered by its donors, but I think, if
breast cancer is ever to really be conquered, we need to know what
Sulik has to say, so that we are reminded not to take things, even
warm, fuzzy, pink things, at face value.
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