When I think about October, I think about fall colors, hoodie weather, college football, Halloween and Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The fact that a majority of the people I know are keenly aware that October is “all about the pink” for breast cancer awareness – is a nod to the strength of the mainstream breast cancer culture. I have always said it is the awareness part of the movement that is the most successful. People are aware, which is a good thing. However, the reality of what being aware achieves is a whole other subject to be looked at.
With all the corporate sponsors that have jumped on the breast cancer train, things are skewed beyond belief. As both the film, “Pink Ribbons, Inc” and the chapter from the book, “The Cultural Politics of Sisterhood” speak to, such a small about of money is actually changing hands from the corporations to various research outlets. The example about the Eureka vacuums, a single dollar per purchase went to research. One dollar! It’s a very misleading campaign that is being sold to the American public. This is just one example, there are hundreds more just like this.
One other thing I would put in the strength column is that it has brought a sense of unity toward a singular cause. However, such a unifying force should be doing more than the results are yielding. Where did the money go? Why are we no further ahead in this “fight”? Research to find a cure is important, but it does nothing for the prevention of the cancer in the first place. October and its promotion of awareness is great to remind women to go and get a mammogram. But that isn’t preventative care, it is there to help identify the earliest stages of the cancer. Ok, then what? Options have only recently begun to include other options other than surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. All of which are lethal in their own right. I have directly lost people that were very close to me. My best friend had a family history of uterine, ovarian and breast cancer. She had two sisters and her mother that all had breast cancer. Her one sister also had uterine cancer, and the other sister also had ovarian cancer. In an act of prevention, my friend sought to have a complete hysterectomy (including the removal of her ovaries) and a double mastectomy. These are brutal surgeries, but she went with the best knowledge available to her to make her decision. Of course, her insurance company denied the surgeries. She successfully appealed (after quite a bit of time) to have the hysterectomy. She was in the process of appealing and re-appealing to the insurance company about the mastectomies when she got her first breast cancer diagnosis. After surgery (NOT a mastectomy), chemotherapy and radiation – she was in remission. Then she proceeded to get thyroid cancer as a direct result of the radiation to the breast. After the removal of her thyroid, she was pronounced cured of the thyroid cancer. Then after repeated denials from her insurance for mastectomies, she got her second diagnosis of breast cancer. Again, the cycle of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy took her back in to remission. Where she stayed for about six years. Then a shadow they had been looking at on her lung was pronounced to be cancer. It was a small cell, metastatic cancer. From that diagnosis to death was only nine months. Though the doctors won’t say the lung cancer was related to her other cancer diagnoses or their treatments, I am convinced they are related.
That journey for my best friend started almost twenty years ago. The only prevention was to cut up and mutilate her body and in the end it didn’t matter anyway. Some may say it is a conspiracy theory to say that there is no money in finding both cure and preventative measures for breast cancer. However, the evidence is that there is a significant possibility of this being the truth and not a conspiracy theory. Breast cancer is a multi-billion-dollar industry. When the cost considerations for everything from a pencil bought with a pink ribbon on it to the cost of multiple rounds of chemotherapy, there are thousands of companies cashing in on the “business” of breast cancer. All the while the women that are dealing with this cancer are still dealing with a horrible disease.
PDF: 7.1. Ley, Barbara. Chapter 5 – “The Cultural Politics of Sisterhood”. In From Pink to Green
Film: 7.1 Léa Pool – “Pink Ribbons, Inc.”
Hi Jennifer, really impactful blog post. Thank you for sharing your heartbreaking story about your friend and her experiences with cancer. I cannot begin to imagine the frustration your friend must have felt as she did everything in her power to be proactive, only to become barricaded by a flawed healthcare/insurance system. As one of the speakers in “Pink Ribbons, Inc.” said, we unfortunately don’t have a lot of ways to attempt to ‘cure’ or ‘combat’ cancer other than to, “…slash, burn, and poison,” the disease away (Pool 2011). More information about preventative care could indeed be the key to reducing the large number of women diagnosed with breast cancer every year. I do have one other part of your post I’d like to touch on: the unification around breast cancer. While creating a network of support is a huge benefit of this unity, the unity of women together toward a single cause could also be seen as problematic. As we discussed briefly this semester, intersectionality is very important when examining health issues and disparities. Individuals who identify as women can unite around the goal of finding a cure for breast cancer, but other social identities of these individuals may complicate this unification. Those from other marginalized identities may have their voices and perspectives drowned out by the dominant approach/ideology for how to best spread awareness for breast cancer and obtain funding for successful research. For example, for a woman who is diagnosed with breast cancer AND is black, she might experience a different set of obstacles when trying to receive treatment and care than a white woman who is also diagnosed. Perhaps these two women would advocate for breast cancer research differently, or would prioritize different changes that need to be made to the breast cancer movement to meet their needs. By centralizing the identity of womanhood, we could be understating the diversity of struggles that women from different socioeconomic statuses, religious backgrounds, race/ethnicities, sexual orientation, etc. face on a daily basis in regard to their health. How do you suggest we go about making sure everyone with differing identities is being heard and validated, while also unifying around the common goal of fighting cancer? Just food for thought…great post!
Works Cited:
2011. Pink Ribbons, Inc. Directed by National Film Board of Canada Production. Performed by Lea Pool.
Hi Savannah. I am happy you took the time to respond to my post. I actually share your insights fully. I should have better expounded on my statement about the unity part. I tried to lessen my jaded anger in my post and I now realize I deleted off too much that would have clarified what I wanted to say. I feel that the large part of the breast cancer “movement” is counterproductive. I meant to go forward in my post to explain much that you have stated, quite well, in your response. I feel that now that a force exists for unifying such a large section of the population that it should be focused more on the totality of the actual problem surrounding the breast cancer epidemic – rather than putting money in corporate pockets. To be brutally honest, and perhaps because I am jaded, I feel that people have been duped in to truly believing they are doing good when they buy a pin with a pink ribbon on it. And, I hate to see those good intentions wasted. The “face” of the movement (being middle aged white women) are the not a complete face of the epidemic. As you stated in your example about a woman being diagnosed and is black, it is possible she is facing a much different disease than the woman that matches the “face” of the movement. You stated, quite well, my thoughts on understanding the diversity of struggles that marginalized segments of the population face. I have been told that my lifestyle choices will increase my chances for getting breast cancer – because I did not birth any children and because (due to illness) I had to be on different hormone regiments throughout my “peak reproductive years”. My friend was basically told that because of her sexual orientation, her doctor “wasn’t surprised” that she had breast cancer. And I also had another friend that was able to get a free mammogram through a charity program, when she did not have any insurance. She had a mass that needed further investigation to see if it was cancer or not. It took months for her to be able to figure out how to manage gaining that care because she did not have insurance. Thankfully she did not have cancer, but those months lost due to red tape could have cost her valuable treatment time. In an answer to your question, I struggle with how to go about it so EVERYONE can be heard, my answer is that I honestly don’t know. Until everyone is truly heard and validated, I fear this current path will continue. Again, thank you for your post – I am happy to have the opportunity to be able to qualify myself as I had originally intended to and should have.