Pinktober comes early . . . ugh

This past weekend while I was reading the paper I decided to take a look through the Sunday paper’s coupons. (By the way, there is almost never anything that isn’t processed, full of chemicals or full of high fructose corn syrup in the coupon items).

Anyway, to my delight (NOT) I found this (see below) the first of the Pinktober ads that we will soon be inundated with, everywhere, during breast cancer awareness month or what used to be known as OCTOBER.

I already feel more hopeful . . .

Wee! Apparently, just like Christmas, retailers make sure it starts earlier and earlier each year. So now Pinktober – the month of breast cancer “awareness” hell – apparently begins a month early. Why should I be surprised. Costco is already selling Christmas items. And why not let them get a leg up on Pinktober? After all, they are curing cancer right? Oh, wait, I meant to say they are “re-branding” . . . isn’t that what Susan G. Komen calls it when they solicit corporations to pay to be pink?

We have all seen it: Pink buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, pink Hamburger Helper, pink cosmetics (that often include carcinogenic chemicals), pink, pink, pink. So where does your money go when you “go pink”? Well, here is where it goes if it is going to Susan G. Komen (only 19% of it goes towards breast cancer research, this from a “non-profit” that sues little non-profits for the use of its trademarked slogan: “For the Cure” (TM)). See chart below:

The above pie chart was created by Cancer Culture Chronicles. Her post “Komen By The Numbers: 2010 And Still No Answers” is a major eye opener on Komen, their expenditures and just how it is that Komen has a “four star rating”. And for a breakdown of the math behind where your money goes, see these two posts by Uneasy Pink: here, where she points out that only “two percent of all research dollars go to metastatic cancer research” Uneasy Pink goes on to remind us that metastatic breast cancer is the kind of breast cancer that kills. So what are we racing for anyway? Certainly not a cure. Certainly not if only 2% of the money goes to research for metastatic breast cancer. And check out some more math from Uneasy Pink in this post where she calculates that out of the $59.00 purchase price for a bottle of Komen’s “Promise Me” perfume only a stinking $1.51 of the proceeds go to research. PUHleez!

Perhaps one of the most outrageous (to me) pink for profit items I have seen are the pink alcoholic beverages.

Their Campaign: "Good On So Many Levels" See? We can all feel good when we buy these products even it is a known fact that alcohol consumption increases a woman's risk of breast cancer . . .but, whatever, right?

To be fair, these companies do make contributions to breast cancer research organizations. But, don’t think that it doesn’t increase their sales – there is real profit in going pink. And if you don’t believe the power of pink in selling a product, here is what one customer of Mike’s Hard Lemonade had to say:

“I went to pick up some of the Mike’s Hard Berry, I was told it was temporarily replaced for Pink Lemonade, due to Breast Cancer Awareness . . . I noticed the proceeds were also going to Breast Cancer Awareness Research, so I went out and bought a whole case.” (Emphasis added). For more on Mike’s Pink Hard Lemonade’s “Good On So Many Levels” (blech) campaign, and more customer comments where they claim they are purchasing more because of the good it is doing, click  here:  (By the way, what is “breast cancer awareness research“? I think the buyer may have meant breast cancer research . . . who knows . . . who cares – it sells).

I do not like Pinktober. So what is my problem with breast cancer awareness month? Why does it bother me, you might ask? Isn’t it good to increase awareness? Isn’t it good to raise money for research? Sure, but, when so little actually goes to a cure and when so many products in the pink bandwagon are actually dangerous and increase the risk of breast cancer and other cancers, I feel it is at best disingenuous.

But most of all, I do not look forward to being asked to donate a dollar “for the cure” every time I go into a grocery store checkout (when I know that only pennies of that dollar ever go to research and far less goes to research for metastatic breast cancer – remember – the kind that kills). I do not look forward to the wall of pink crap food at the entrance of and through every aisle every grocery store (I have yet to find a remotely healthy product that has gone pink . . . maybe this year I will find one).

I do not look forward to the false hope that pink sells.

Komen's "Promise Me" Perfume (or what I like to call "Fleur de Fraud"). Cost of this perfume: $59.00. Actual amount of purchase price that goes towards cancer research: $1.51 (Thank you to Uneasy Pink for doing the math).

And I especially I do not look forward to my disease, my suffering, my Aunt’s suffering and her ultimate death from breast cancer, and the suffering of so many other women and men being hijacked for profit.

I do not look forward to my friends and loved ones – who often have felt so helpless in the face of my illness – manipulated into purchasing items that are pink, tricked into believing it is doing me some good or that it will help some woman out there, when in fact these pink purchases often deliver very little to research. And some, deliver none – their promise in exchange for your money? To increase awareness. We need to move past awareness and sink our dollars (not just pennies of our dollars) into research.

And what about the walks and races to raise money for breast cancer? These are often incredibly uplifting events, providing a great deal of support and hope to both cancer patients, survivors and their families and friends. So clearly their IS some value beyond the irritatingly low 19% that goes towards research. Still, in my opinion, not enough. So many show up at these races to do good. I have walked in the past. My friends have walked on my behalf and their doing so has made me feel stronger. Chemobabe wrote a great post about this and dealt with the question of how we can be critical of an organization that makes these experiences (their walks) possible.

And for more reading about Komen try Komenwatch and read here, a blog post by one of my online friends Nancy of Nancy’s Point where she asks SGK for an apology. I agree with you Nancy, I think we all deserve one.

Okay, so you get it by now, Lisa (that’d be me) is not a fan of pink. And now, hopefully, you will have an understanding of why. I am hopeful that SGK (and others who are taking money in the name of breast cancer research) will find the surge of criticism on the web to be constructive and will prove to us all that they can do better than 19%, will do better and will honor their mission (albeit trademarked) to race for a cure (Registered Trademark, Susan G. Komen).

And, just so you know, I have worn my share of pink . . . I wore a pink t-shirt to many chemo and Herceptin rounds. But, I wore that shirt because it had, in very bold, large, black letters the word “FIERCE”.

My Mom bought me this "fierce" t-shirt, it was my "F" word for cancer treatment.

I loved that shirt. It is faded now, having been through the wash many times and worn many times . . . to chemo, to the gym and sometimes to bed. It was as if wearing that word across my chest (and for a good part of the year . . . across no chest) could influence the battle beneath. Fierce. I could make myself fierce even if I did not feel that way, I could make my cells within my body wage the war I needed waged and conquer the cancer.

So, I wore that shirt in spite of it being pink. But, that pink shirt didn’t save me. Research saved me – if I am even saved (I am thankfully, gratefully NED: “no evidence of disease”). Research that lead to the development of Herceptin made it possible for me to still be here. Women who gave their last days of an aggressive cancer to participate in early trials of Herceptin, they saved my life or at the very least, prolonged it.

Awareness did not prevent my cancer. Awareness is not a cure. And, we still, after so many years of pink branding, really do need to race towards research to cure all cancers.

Related articles

• It’s that time of year again…. Landmark Days and Extreme October approaching rapidly (feistybluegeckofightsback.wordpress.com)
• The Power of Pink: Cause-Related marketing and the Impact on Breast Cancer

Tags: breast cancer, cancer, cancer survivor, Metastasis, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, pink products, pinktober, survivorship, Susan G. Komen for the Cure