The Price of Pink
In 1990, a woman named Charlotte Haley mailed cards to friends and family, as well as prominent businesswomen, in honor of her loved ones who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. The cards highlighted the fact that at the time, only 5% of the National Institutes of Health budget was designated for breast cancer research. Most importantly, however, a salmon colored ribbon was glued to each card (see image below). The ribbons caught the attention of Evelyn Lauder, the then CEO of the cosmetics company Estée Lauder. Consequently, Estée Lauder teamed up with Self magazine to create a special magazine insert that would be sent out during Breast Cancer Awareness month that included a ribbon, inspired by the ones Haley had mailed out. But when Haley refused to work with Estée Lauder and let them profit off of her orangey-peach colored ribbons, the company changed the color to pink (both to avoid a law suit and because the color pink is so closely tied to femininity and womanhood, as is breast cancer). Ever since those inserts were sent out almost 30 years ago, Estée Lauder has distributed more than 70 million pink ribbons around the world.
Over 3.1 million people have had breast cancer, and approximately 40,000 women die from breast cancer each year. More so, the breast is the most common location for cancer diagnosis in women, and breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women. There is no doubt that breast cancer research and awareness is a worthy cause- many people have been touched by the disease and genuinely want to do something to help. But born out of those good intentions came a new trend of for-profit firms aligning themselves with breast cancer charities as a means to boost sales along with their corporate image. This phenomenon is known as pinkwashing.
It sounds great on the surface- people buy pink lipsticks, or vacuums, or NFL jerseys, and get to publicly display their solidarity with a cause that pretty much everyone can agree is worthy, as well as making a monetary donation that could theoretically lead to the next big cancer breakthrough. But it also sounds a little too good to be true. Ending breast cancer, or any cancer for that matter, seems like it would be more difficult than that. Some causes can effectively be promoted through single-point solutions, but breast cancer is not one of them. I get that “breast cancer awareness is bad” is a hard argument to make, but this project is basically going to be saying that breast cancer awareness, at least in its current form, is bad.
Once those first pink ribbons were sent out in Self magazine, almost everything has been sold to us at some point with a pink ribbon on the packaging, and the promise that part of the price we were paying would be going to breast cancer charities. Even before the pink ribbons were introduced, breast cancer was still a disease that many people have a connection to and encountered in their everyday lives, but the ubiquity of the ribbons made it even more so.