October is finally here, and with it come yellow leaves, orange pumpkins and pink ribbons. That’s right; it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, where the color pink suddenly pops up in every other aisle of the grocery store and is pinned to jackets, backpacks, and shirts.
But what does it really mean to buy pink? What awareness are we actually contributing to when we wear pink shirts with the pink ribbon logo over our hearts?
In short, we are doing more to fund the corporations who sport the pink logo rather than contributing to awareness, or even more important: prevention.
The first breast cancer ribbon was actually peach colored. Charlotte Haley, who was the mother, grandmother, and sister of women who fought breast cancer, begun making the ribbons in her home as part of her own advocacy. When later approached by Estee Lauder and Self Magazine who wanted to go big with her ribbons and story, she declined because she was not interested in commercial activism and rightly so. Today the activism of corporations has developed and transformed so much that it has its own category of marketing: cause marketing.
Cause marketing is when an industry links their product to a charitable cause, or sometimes a non-profit organization, and in turn sells their product as having philanthropic benefits. While that sounds all well and good, this type of marketing has gotten out of hand. This is especially true of breast cancer marketing, also known as pinkwashing. Pinkwashing was coined by Breast Cancer Action to explain how corporations have taken the cause of breast cancer to sell their products while also selling products that are tied to the development of the disease.
We all know the Susan G. Komen Foundations as an active organization that supports breast cancer awareness. I personally have participated in 3 of their Race for the Cure 5k runs with my family and proudly sported pink shirts and shoelaces with their logo. So imagine my shock when I learned that the Susan G. Komen Foundation was one pinkwashing offender. In 2011 the Komen Foundation released a perfume called “Promise Me.” The big problem with the perfume was the unlisted ingredients: galaxolide, a known hormone disruptor, and toluene, a neurotoxin that has been banned by the International Fragrance Association. After a backlash of bad press, the Komen Foundation has since then changed the composition of Promise Me perfume. But because of the Komen Foundation’s role in breast cancer activism, these ingredients should have never been included in the first place.
While some people may brush off the perfume mislabeling by claiming ‘perfume isn’t going to give me cancer’, the fact is we don’t know the actual causes of breast cancer. While we do know that genetics, aging and a previous history of benign breast lumps are all risk factors of breast cancer, the big elephant in the room are environmental factors, which are largely being ignored by breast cancer awareness campaigns.
Secondly, when we look at the actual donation that comes from selling the perfume, we see that only 13.5% of the perfume sales went to the Komen Foundation. It was then calculated by Breast Cancer Action that only 19% of the previous percentage goes to breast cancer research. All these percentages add up to about $1.51 of each bottle funding actual research. This is pocket change compared with the $59 price tag the perfume came with.
So before you buy a shirt, yogurt, necklace or a pen, ask questions. Ask, “Where is my money actually going?” Is this going to benefit breast cancer research or to the company making the product? If you can’t find the answer on the label or with a quick web search, it is more likely your purchase isn’t contributing directly to the cause.
On the other hand, there are ways you CAN contribute. The first step is to become educated and spread awareness to others; not by only sporting pink ribbon gear, but by talking with other people about the causes, risk factors, screening, and prevention measures surrounding breast cancer. Then advocate your government officials to take further action into spreading awareness and regulating ingredients companies use in their products. You can join a grassroots cancer advocacy group that focuses on educating your community or fundraising for research directly. And of course you can donate directly to support cancer research.
No matter which of these ways you choose to contribute, do more than just wear pink.
Photo Credit One: Tom Bush