The Problem with October: Annual Update.
Hi, all. I have a huge update coming in the next few days detailing my vacation trip to London, but I wanted to post this first, being that it IS, after all, October 1st.
So. It's getting to be that time of year again. The great big pink month of October is looming large, and we all know that that means. It's time to don our fuzzy pink slippers, sip our cocoa out of our pink ribboned coffee mug, and bedazzle the world with our swift and unsatiable consumption of M&M's, yogurt lids, and non-recyclable plastic bracelets...all in the name of [insert dramatic pause here] "the cause."
Speaking of months dedicated to cancer...did you know that September is ovarian cancer awareness month? You didn't? Me either. And did you know that if you're in favor of colon cancer awareness that you should wear a brown ribbon? Ha. Brown ribbon, colon cancer...get it? Seriously, who makes these rules?
Corporations. Corporations have invented [insert body part here] cancer awareness month. Let's talk about this.
I am only a little over three years into breast cancer, and I'm already sick of "cause-related" marketing. But here's what is interesting to me. I remember that in the past two years, I'd start seeing advertisements for pink tinged everything, from teddy bears to stand mixers, starting in about August. That's also the first month I began to see those pink and white M&M's and when 3M announced they were going to build the world's largest pink ribbon in Times Square (to promote "awareness" or whatever...personally, I'd have been happier had they done away with the pink ribbon and just handed out informational breast cancer pamphlets to people, but there I go again with actually trying to make "awareness" informational). Anyways, I've been tracking these things since my diagnosis, and have been preparing myself for yet another yearly onslaught.
Well...maybe it's just the particular magazines I read, but am I the only one who has noticed a significant drop off in cause-related marketing this year for breast cancer? I flipped through my September issues and found only a handful of advertisements (Yoplait and Ford, mainly). I flipped through October and was shocked to find only ONE advertisement (Yoplait...they're really pushing their lids campaign this year). Where's all the advertisements for Lee National Denim Day? Or for Kitchen Aid's "Cook for the Cure" program? Even the Yahoo! homepage is eerily silent. I mean, it's October 1st today and...nothing. Not a single thing on breast cancer, not even a "news" link on the Yahoo!Health page. This is a bit shocking, as for the past two years running they painted their entire homepage a lovely salmon pink color on October 1st in (ahem) "honor" of the disease. But this year...nada. Seriously, what gives?
This really irritates me. I know that sounds hypocritical on the surface. I mean, on one hand I complain that everybody wants to jump on the breast cancer marketing bandwagon, and now I'm complaining that I'm not seeing as much advertising as years past. Sure, the advertising is unrealistically annoying, but it's not the content of the advertising that has bothered me the most. It was the fact that it seemed as if everyone treated breast cancer as if it was some sort of trendy accessory, like Ugg boots and tiny chihuahuas. And it is very saddening to me that gee, now that the "coolness" factor has worn off, those same corporations that once championed the cause are now moving on to the next trendy cancer...which, I daresay, will be ovarian cancer.
Seriously, you heard it hear first, everyone. Ovarian cancer awareness is going to be BIG in the next five years. I've already started to see my first few advertisements for it, which is how I knew that September was chosen as the month of awareness for this particular cancer (and trust me, choosing September over, say April, as the month of choice wasn't an accident so much as it was strategy). But why ovarian? Because corporations love marketing to women, whom they perceive as being too stupidly sentimental to be able to resist buying the crappy little teddy bear with the teal colored ribbon on it.
And that's the crux of it right there. It's not the misinformation that is given out on breast cancer (things like mammograms prevent breast cancer) or the fact that very little "awareness" is provided to the women who are the most uneducated about the disease (underprivileged and minority women, to be specific). The brunt of this issue has and always will be that corporations have an underlying assumption that it is easy to manipulate women to give up their hard-earned money. It's bad enough that women have to deal with affronts to their self-esteem that arise from unrealistically thin movie stars and air-brushed centerfold models. Using breast and ovarian cancers to get us to spend money is the marketing equivalent of taking a scalpel and surgically splicing out pieces of our most basic selves. It's tragic enough that we look in the mirror and feel bad for having love handles or cellulite. No, now we get to look in the mirror and feel angst simply because we have breasts and ovaries. We are made to live in fear not because of our gender but because of our ANATOMY...but don't worry. We can alleviate those fears by simply giving to the cause. We feel better and better about ourselves the more we pile on those plastic bracelets.
So getting back to this year's month of October and how I've seen fewer advertisements for breast cancer. I'm not necessarily surprised by this, although I'm surprised it's happening so soon. Breast cancer awareness has reached a saturation point where it is suddenly no longer "the" cancer for women to have. It's popularity has peaked and now it's time to move on. And I would suspect that in the next five years, as the pink tide wanes even further, that we're going to see donations for breast cancer research drop to dismal levels while donations for ovarian cancer, the "other" womanly cancer, will start to skyrocket.
What's better in this case? Was it a good idea that breast cancer became so popular? I mean, if the early 2000's are going to be known as the heyday of when everyone gave to breast cancer research, then that's OK, right? So what if it only boomed for a few years? It still raised more money than if it hadn't boomed...or at least, that's the theory.
But what about long term? What, exactly, have we done with ourselves by placing cancer on the same pedestal as prairie skirts and Jimmy Choo shoes? Feminist issues aside, what have we done to "the cause" besides just commodify it? Let's face it. Breast cancer awareness as it stands today is an outright laughingstock. We've taken a gravely serious illness and turned it into pop culture fluff. I fully expect that in the year 2015 VH-1 will come out with their "I Love the 00's" special, and everyone will be talking about the year of the pink awareness bracelet. And people will laugh and say, "Oh-my-god, I HAD one of those!", kind of like I did when I watched "I Love the 80's" and they talked about the Madonna-era jelly bracelets. Only this is breast cancer. BREAST CANCER. People fucking die of this.
I'm not sure people understand that last part. At least, they don't seem to around here where I live. Play a word association with any given person in this city and I guarantee that most people, when asked to mention the first words that come to their heads when they think of breast cancer, will say "car magnet." I would venture to say, though, that this probably isn't just confined to the tiny city in which I live. This is a phenomenon that's as widespread and as mentally toxic as the actual disease itself.
I've been around people with breast cancer for quite a while now, and from what I can tell, there are quite a few women who share some of my same sentiments on this issue. Perhpas this is why corporations are beginning to ditch the color pink in favor of the darker, newer hue of blue-green ovarian cancer...a disease that is practically unheard of and as such is virtually ripe for exploitation. Perhaps they have sensed that they have made all that they can off of women's sympathies towards breast cancer.
When I was in college, I had to read The Ladies' Paradise by Emile Zola. Great book, as are most of Zola's works. The book was basically about the opening of the first department store in Paris sometime around 1880. In the book, a young girl comes to Paris to work at her uncle's small store that occupies a space across the street from the huge new department store. The small store begins to feel the pinch in sales, as the large department store is able to offer more variety, lower prices and higher wages. This latter issue causes the young girl to defect from her familial obligations to pursue a career in the fabric section of Zola's monstrous capitalistic icon. The young girl is pushed by male managers to exploit the inherent weaknesses of women, and is told that women are easily manipulated into buying things that they don't need when the message is delivered with a friendly smile...and with a sales pitch that appeals specifically to the overly-emotional nature of all womankind.
The Ladies Paradise was written in the late 19th century, but it doesn't seem as if much has changed since then. In the eyes of modern-day corporations, women are still nothing more than unwittingly stupid drones who can't think logically beyond the incessant sales hype they're being fed and are looked upon as able to be easily led because of their supposedly inherent emotional nature, an emotional nature that doesn't seem to exist in the far superior gender known as "man." Breast cancer marketing literally banks on these old Victorian stereotypes that women are frail beings that are blinded by emotions and are unable to think for themselves, and as such, we are thus easily molded into behaving in certain ways. It's like all the world is a stage and we as women are all Eliza Doolittles. Meanwhile, the role of Henry Higgins is dilligently played by those corporations who unabashedly tell us that woman are overly emotional and then use that generally accepted (but false) knowledge to manipulate us into buying what is, in reality, just junk.
But breast cancer is not a performance that exists solely for the entertainment of others. It's not the latest trendy show that everyone is raving about. This is a serious illness that is so NOT about anything pink. This is an illness that involves vomit and diarrhea and pain and, in some cases, the snuffing out of a life. Is it emotional? You bet. But it's not emotional because it's primarily a woman's disease and by nature we are emotional creatures. It's emotional because it's just...fucking...HARD. Assuming anything beyond that is just calling upon a stereotype, and that's a situation that is insulting in its own right. But when corporations assume that AND use it to emotionally sell things...that's beyond insulting and is outright despicably reprehensible.
One part of me is greatly relieved to not have to see any more of that pink ribbon shit everywhere. I'm sorry, but none of that is doing anyone any favors when it comes to this disease and despite the good intentions of some people who partake in this pink ribbon madness, I just have to say that it's doing more harm than good, even if for no other reason than it re-upholds false notions of women as being delicate, overly sensitive creatures in constant need of emotional passification via shopping. But there is another part of me that is disturbed by this sudden lack of marketing, and the reason for this is that it proves that corporations really don't care about breast cancer. Not that I ever thought that they did, mind you. I just say that because that is the argument I hear most when in debate with someone over cause-related marketing. I've heard on more than one occasion the whole "corporations MUST care because otherwise they would be doing nothing" as the reason why corporations put pink ribbons on everything.
Really? They care about me, little old me, and my "fight" with breast cancer? Wow. Then I must have done something to make them mad at me, because this year I'm just not feelin' the love.
Cause-related marketing has done little to advance the cause of breast cancer awareness, and if you don't believe me then go into the predominantly black and poverty stricken neighborhoods of your city and see how many SUV's have pink ribbon magnets on them. There's been no advancement for "the cause." All the marketing has done has advanced the cause of corporations' pocketbooks by catering to the fears of middle-class women who drive mini-vans, watch Dr. Phil, and shop as a means of therapy...as if they're somehow magically the only women in the world who get breast cancer. And cause-related marketing will continue to do this, simply because American women as a general population have yet to question the judgment that they are "naturally" prone to emotional shopping and because there are a number of really scary female cancers to which corporations can attach themselves like barnacles.
I hate to admit this, but there is a tiny part of me that is glad that this happened, and it's not just because I can go around saying "I told you so" to all of these people who thought I was crazy for being skeptical of all things pink. It's because that pink ribbon MEANS something to me. Sounds strange, but it truly does. When I was first diagnosed, I felt very...I don't know. Alone? Desolate? A one man island? None of those words quite capture the essence of how segregated I felt and I looked around in desperation to find a way to fix that. Back in 2002 when I was diagnosed no one routinely wore pink ribbon bracelets or necklaces and no one had car magnets or teddy bears on their dashboards. I wore a pink ribbon on my collar every day and it was rare that I ever saw anyone else with one on. But when I did, I always struck up a conversation with them. I asked who they knew who was diagnosed, how they were doing, and always let them know that I wished them the best. And other women reciprocated. It was like the pink ribbon was our own little secret code that let other women in the breast cancer club know that we were members right along with them.
But something happened in 2003. I began to see pink stuff everywhere. Maybe it was always that way, though, and I just never noticed. However, I'm not convinced of that because along with the sudden explosion in all things Pepto-Bismol, there was a difference that occurred in my conversations with people. No longer was I having a meaningful conversation about breast cancer and chemotherapy and learning about how this disease was affecting someone. No, now when I approached a young person wearing a pink ribbon I would invariably get something like "Oh, they were giving these bracelets out at work." And it was always spoken casually as they snapped their chewing gum and dialed their cell phone. Nine times out of ten it also included the oh-so-aloof attitude typical of young people, an air that seemed to silently say, "Um, hi there, weirdo, why are you talking to me?"
It's because of this that I'm glad corporations are deciding to leave breast cancer alone. They didn't help anything, and now maybe we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming where breast cancer is an actual DISEASE that includes a robust EXPERIENCE and is not just some simple little trinket they can sell to the Paris Hilton wannabe crowd.
Last July, I removed the pink ribbon pin from my collar for the last time and haven't worn it since simply because I couldn't stand what it was beginning to represent. Now, maybe, I might venture to start wearing it again...now that it might start meaning something other than the support of corporate profits.
So. It's getting to be that time of year again. The great big pink month of October is looming large, and we all know that that means. It's time to don our fuzzy pink slippers, sip our cocoa out of our pink ribboned coffee mug, and bedazzle the world with our swift and unsatiable consumption of M&M's, yogurt lids, and non-recyclable plastic bracelets...all in the name of [insert dramatic pause here] "the cause."
Speaking of months dedicated to cancer...did you know that September is ovarian cancer awareness month? You didn't? Me either. And did you know that if you're in favor of colon cancer awareness that you should wear a brown ribbon? Ha. Brown ribbon, colon cancer...get it? Seriously, who makes these rules?
Corporations. Corporations have invented [insert body part here] cancer awareness month. Let's talk about this.
I am only a little over three years into breast cancer, and I'm already sick of "cause-related" marketing. But here's what is interesting to me. I remember that in the past two years, I'd start seeing advertisements for pink tinged everything, from teddy bears to stand mixers, starting in about August. That's also the first month I began to see those pink and white M&M's and when 3M announced they were going to build the world's largest pink ribbon in Times Square (to promote "awareness" or whatever...personally, I'd have been happier had they done away with the pink ribbon and just handed out informational breast cancer pamphlets to people, but there I go again with actually trying to make "awareness" informational). Anyways, I've been tracking these things since my diagnosis, and have been preparing myself for yet another yearly onslaught.
Well...maybe it's just the particular magazines I read, but am I the only one who has noticed a significant drop off in cause-related marketing this year for breast cancer? I flipped through my September issues and found only a handful of advertisements (Yoplait and Ford, mainly). I flipped through October and was shocked to find only ONE advertisement (Yoplait...they're really pushing their lids campaign this year). Where's all the advertisements for Lee National Denim Day? Or for Kitchen Aid's "Cook for the Cure" program? Even the Yahoo! homepage is eerily silent. I mean, it's October 1st today and...nothing. Not a single thing on breast cancer, not even a "news" link on the Yahoo!Health page. This is a bit shocking, as for the past two years running they painted their entire homepage a lovely salmon pink color on October 1st in (ahem) "honor" of the disease. But this year...nada. Seriously, what gives?
This really irritates me. I know that sounds hypocritical on the surface. I mean, on one hand I complain that everybody wants to jump on the breast cancer marketing bandwagon, and now I'm complaining that I'm not seeing as much advertising as years past. Sure, the advertising is unrealistically annoying, but it's not the content of the advertising that has bothered me the most. It was the fact that it seemed as if everyone treated breast cancer as if it was some sort of trendy accessory, like Ugg boots and tiny chihuahuas. And it is very saddening to me that gee, now that the "coolness" factor has worn off, those same corporations that once championed the cause are now moving on to the next trendy cancer...which, I daresay, will be ovarian cancer.
Seriously, you heard it hear first, everyone. Ovarian cancer awareness is going to be BIG in the next five years. I've already started to see my first few advertisements for it, which is how I knew that September was chosen as the month of awareness for this particular cancer (and trust me, choosing September over, say April, as the month of choice wasn't an accident so much as it was strategy). But why ovarian? Because corporations love marketing to women, whom they perceive as being too stupidly sentimental to be able to resist buying the crappy little teddy bear with the teal colored ribbon on it.
And that's the crux of it right there. It's not the misinformation that is given out on breast cancer (things like mammograms prevent breast cancer) or the fact that very little "awareness" is provided to the women who are the most uneducated about the disease (underprivileged and minority women, to be specific). The brunt of this issue has and always will be that corporations have an underlying assumption that it is easy to manipulate women to give up their hard-earned money. It's bad enough that women have to deal with affronts to their self-esteem that arise from unrealistically thin movie stars and air-brushed centerfold models. Using breast and ovarian cancers to get us to spend money is the marketing equivalent of taking a scalpel and surgically splicing out pieces of our most basic selves. It's tragic enough that we look in the mirror and feel bad for having love handles or cellulite. No, now we get to look in the mirror and feel angst simply because we have breasts and ovaries. We are made to live in fear not because of our gender but because of our ANATOMY...but don't worry. We can alleviate those fears by simply giving to the cause. We feel better and better about ourselves the more we pile on those plastic bracelets.
So getting back to this year's month of October and how I've seen fewer advertisements for breast cancer. I'm not necessarily surprised by this, although I'm surprised it's happening so soon. Breast cancer awareness has reached a saturation point where it is suddenly no longer "the" cancer for women to have. It's popularity has peaked and now it's time to move on. And I would suspect that in the next five years, as the pink tide wanes even further, that we're going to see donations for breast cancer research drop to dismal levels while donations for ovarian cancer, the "other" womanly cancer, will start to skyrocket.
What's better in this case? Was it a good idea that breast cancer became so popular? I mean, if the early 2000's are going to be known as the heyday of when everyone gave to breast cancer research, then that's OK, right? So what if it only boomed for a few years? It still raised more money than if it hadn't boomed...or at least, that's the theory.
But what about long term? What, exactly, have we done with ourselves by placing cancer on the same pedestal as prairie skirts and Jimmy Choo shoes? Feminist issues aside, what have we done to "the cause" besides just commodify it? Let's face it. Breast cancer awareness as it stands today is an outright laughingstock. We've taken a gravely serious illness and turned it into pop culture fluff. I fully expect that in the year 2015 VH-1 will come out with their "I Love the 00's" special, and everyone will be talking about the year of the pink awareness bracelet. And people will laugh and say, "Oh-my-god, I HAD one of those!", kind of like I did when I watched "I Love the 80's" and they talked about the Madonna-era jelly bracelets. Only this is breast cancer. BREAST CANCER. People fucking die of this.
I'm not sure people understand that last part. At least, they don't seem to around here where I live. Play a word association with any given person in this city and I guarantee that most people, when asked to mention the first words that come to their heads when they think of breast cancer, will say "car magnet." I would venture to say, though, that this probably isn't just confined to the tiny city in which I live. This is a phenomenon that's as widespread and as mentally toxic as the actual disease itself.
I've been around people with breast cancer for quite a while now, and from what I can tell, there are quite a few women who share some of my same sentiments on this issue. Perhpas this is why corporations are beginning to ditch the color pink in favor of the darker, newer hue of blue-green ovarian cancer...a disease that is practically unheard of and as such is virtually ripe for exploitation. Perhaps they have sensed that they have made all that they can off of women's sympathies towards breast cancer.
When I was in college, I had to read The Ladies' Paradise by Emile Zola. Great book, as are most of Zola's works. The book was basically about the opening of the first department store in Paris sometime around 1880. In the book, a young girl comes to Paris to work at her uncle's small store that occupies a space across the street from the huge new department store. The small store begins to feel the pinch in sales, as the large department store is able to offer more variety, lower prices and higher wages. This latter issue causes the young girl to defect from her familial obligations to pursue a career in the fabric section of Zola's monstrous capitalistic icon. The young girl is pushed by male managers to exploit the inherent weaknesses of women, and is told that women are easily manipulated into buying things that they don't need when the message is delivered with a friendly smile...and with a sales pitch that appeals specifically to the overly-emotional nature of all womankind.
The Ladies Paradise was written in the late 19th century, but it doesn't seem as if much has changed since then. In the eyes of modern-day corporations, women are still nothing more than unwittingly stupid drones who can't think logically beyond the incessant sales hype they're being fed and are looked upon as able to be easily led because of their supposedly inherent emotional nature, an emotional nature that doesn't seem to exist in the far superior gender known as "man." Breast cancer marketing literally banks on these old Victorian stereotypes that women are frail beings that are blinded by emotions and are unable to think for themselves, and as such, we are thus easily molded into behaving in certain ways. It's like all the world is a stage and we as women are all Eliza Doolittles. Meanwhile, the role of Henry Higgins is dilligently played by those corporations who unabashedly tell us that woman are overly emotional and then use that generally accepted (but false) knowledge to manipulate us into buying what is, in reality, just junk.
But breast cancer is not a performance that exists solely for the entertainment of others. It's not the latest trendy show that everyone is raving about. This is a serious illness that is so NOT about anything pink. This is an illness that involves vomit and diarrhea and pain and, in some cases, the snuffing out of a life. Is it emotional? You bet. But it's not emotional because it's primarily a woman's disease and by nature we are emotional creatures. It's emotional because it's just...fucking...HARD. Assuming anything beyond that is just calling upon a stereotype, and that's a situation that is insulting in its own right. But when corporations assume that AND use it to emotionally sell things...that's beyond insulting and is outright despicably reprehensible.
One part of me is greatly relieved to not have to see any more of that pink ribbon shit everywhere. I'm sorry, but none of that is doing anyone any favors when it comes to this disease and despite the good intentions of some people who partake in this pink ribbon madness, I just have to say that it's doing more harm than good, even if for no other reason than it re-upholds false notions of women as being delicate, overly sensitive creatures in constant need of emotional passification via shopping. But there is another part of me that is disturbed by this sudden lack of marketing, and the reason for this is that it proves that corporations really don't care about breast cancer. Not that I ever thought that they did, mind you. I just say that because that is the argument I hear most when in debate with someone over cause-related marketing. I've heard on more than one occasion the whole "corporations MUST care because otherwise they would be doing nothing" as the reason why corporations put pink ribbons on everything.
Really? They care about me, little old me, and my "fight" with breast cancer? Wow. Then I must have done something to make them mad at me, because this year I'm just not feelin' the love.
Cause-related marketing has done little to advance the cause of breast cancer awareness, and if you don't believe me then go into the predominantly black and poverty stricken neighborhoods of your city and see how many SUV's have pink ribbon magnets on them. There's been no advancement for "the cause." All the marketing has done has advanced the cause of corporations' pocketbooks by catering to the fears of middle-class women who drive mini-vans, watch Dr. Phil, and shop as a means of therapy...as if they're somehow magically the only women in the world who get breast cancer. And cause-related marketing will continue to do this, simply because American women as a general population have yet to question the judgment that they are "naturally" prone to emotional shopping and because there are a number of really scary female cancers to which corporations can attach themselves like barnacles.
I hate to admit this, but there is a tiny part of me that is glad that this happened, and it's not just because I can go around saying "I told you so" to all of these people who thought I was crazy for being skeptical of all things pink. It's because that pink ribbon MEANS something to me. Sounds strange, but it truly does. When I was first diagnosed, I felt very...I don't know. Alone? Desolate? A one man island? None of those words quite capture the essence of how segregated I felt and I looked around in desperation to find a way to fix that. Back in 2002 when I was diagnosed no one routinely wore pink ribbon bracelets or necklaces and no one had car magnets or teddy bears on their dashboards. I wore a pink ribbon on my collar every day and it was rare that I ever saw anyone else with one on. But when I did, I always struck up a conversation with them. I asked who they knew who was diagnosed, how they were doing, and always let them know that I wished them the best. And other women reciprocated. It was like the pink ribbon was our own little secret code that let other women in the breast cancer club know that we were members right along with them.
But something happened in 2003. I began to see pink stuff everywhere. Maybe it was always that way, though, and I just never noticed. However, I'm not convinced of that because along with the sudden explosion in all things Pepto-Bismol, there was a difference that occurred in my conversations with people. No longer was I having a meaningful conversation about breast cancer and chemotherapy and learning about how this disease was affecting someone. No, now when I approached a young person wearing a pink ribbon I would invariably get something like "Oh, they were giving these bracelets out at work." And it was always spoken casually as they snapped their chewing gum and dialed their cell phone. Nine times out of ten it also included the oh-so-aloof attitude typical of young people, an air that seemed to silently say, "Um, hi there, weirdo, why are you talking to me?"
It's because of this that I'm glad corporations are deciding to leave breast cancer alone. They didn't help anything, and now maybe we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming where breast cancer is an actual DISEASE that includes a robust EXPERIENCE and is not just some simple little trinket they can sell to the Paris Hilton wannabe crowd.
Last July, I removed the pink ribbon pin from my collar for the last time and haven't worn it since simply because I couldn't stand what it was beginning to represent. Now, maybe, I might venture to start wearing it again...now that it might start meaning something other than the support of corporate profits.