Breast cancer is tied with lung cancer on the most common types of cancers worldwide with 2.09 million cases (WHO). Cancer is the second leading cause of death globally and it doesn’t matter who you are, you personally know someone or have seen someone that is affected by this terrible disease. Luckily, we live in a world that is constantly changing and discovering new things every day, so we have the resources and accessibility to various doctors, technology, trials, and therapies. I know several people in my family/friend realm have been affected by breast cancer specifically, so I became very familiar with the pink ribbon movement at a very young age. 

The pink ribbon is a symbol of femininity of what breast cancer is. It is used to help raise awareness for those that have suffered or are currently suffering from breast cancer. In the film “Pink Ribbons” it talks about how the ribbon almost hides what people actually go through. It is a vibrant color and a cute little bow that people don’t really associate with what the words “breast cancer” actually mean, but rather focus on the words itself. It was interesting to think about how many different fund raisers and movements there are out there that help raise awareness and money for this cause. According to Pool’s article, she mentions that only a small fraction of their funding actually goes to donating to help research. It really makes me upset to see this because it is such a major issue. Something else that was kind of interesting was that there isn’t much out there about prevention, only how to detect the issue early on and the treatment for it if you do have it. I think this is also a big problem and people should also start asking questions and making a movement to help figure out the cause. Too many people are being impacted by breast cancer and we need to start figuring out the source. 

I honestly haven’t really ever thought about there being negative effects on the movement of breast cancer. I knew what it was and a good idea of what the patient had to go through, but never really how the person was feeling about it and how society played a negative role. I have always just associated the pink ribbon as an empowering movement for “survivors” but never those who didn’t make it and weren’t a survivor. I get where the term “survivor” is great if you actually make it past all the chemo and come out beating the cancer, but I have never thought about how husbands, wives, siblings, grandparents, friends and so on feel when they lose someone and there isn’t a term for it. It is a bit morbid and sad thinking about this, but it makes it seem like they weren’t strong enough when in fact that isn’t true one bit. It was also kind of frustrating to realize how many companies actually make money off of promoting themselves to “support” breast cancer but actually only donate a small percentage of the products they sell that “help the cause or raise awareness”. I feel like in a way this is false advertisement and a slap in the face to those that are actually suffering from the disease because it is taking advantage of something so serious and deadly just for a company to make a profit which is so disturbing. 

“Cancer.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cancer.

Film: 7.1 Léa Pool – “Pink Ribbons, Inc.” 

PDF: 7.1. Ley, Barbara. Chapter 5 – “The Cultural Politics of Sisterhood”. In From Pink to Green