I don't really have a point with the rambling I'm about to sprawl across this web page. It's more of an observation, but I am interested in hearing what you have to say. The whole thing has me standing around with my panties in a wad, which is a terribly uncomfortable way to exist. There's a part of me that thinks I should just chill, but there's also that part that has Opinions and Stuff and those Opinions and Stuff include already being on the record about pinkwashing.
I hate it.
With every fiber of my being.
I hate the way companies throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at marketing "Breast Cancer Awareness" products and then turn around and maybe donate a couple of dollars to some organization that claims to exist in the interest of making everyone more "aware" of the terrible, terrible disease.
Some of us are very much so aware of it already, thank you very much.
I think my opinions on the whole thing are very well represented with this (thanks Allison!). Why are we spending millions on "awareness" when we could be spending millions on prevention? There is a lot of science behind prevention and there could be so much more if we focused on that avenue instead of trying to figure out ways to squeeze pink ribbons on our packages of yogurt.
Don't get me wrong -- if you have been touched by breast cancer and the pink ribbons bring you solace, or help you feel less alone, or whatever, that's fantastic. That's not the part that bothers me. It's the part where we throw a pink pair of shoes on an athlete and sell a pink jersey with his number on it that bothers me.
I'm looking at you, NFL.
The most recent statistic that I could find about the NFL's alleged "good intentions" found that for every $100 in pink merchandise the NFL sells, $3.54 goes towards breast cancer research. The NFL keeps $45. They say that money goes back to paying for the marketing efforts, but that gets us right back where we started -- for every $100 you give the NFL for pink stuff, they pass on $3.54 to breast cancer research. Maybe it would be more efficient if you bought that black and gold jersey and just gave $5 to a cancer research organization? You'd save a few bucks in the deal and more would go to research.
I've stopped watching NFL games in October because of it all. The pink shoes and towels and flags and ALL OF IT ... it just makes me crazy.
But lots of people haven't stopped watching.
Including little kids.
The little kids who dream of growing up to be football players or cheerleaders or whatever see the pink and they want to be just like those people they look up to. They want to follow along.
So there is pink stuff everywhere, even at football games played by first and second graders. The cheerleaders are in on the action, with pink bows in their hair and sometimes pink pompoms swishing around.
Alexis is one of those cheerleaders. She's standing there with her pink bow, not really knowing much of anything about what it means. She just knows "it's cute," so I suppose we need to have some conversations about prevention and the grandmother she never knew and how she is at risk because genetics are a bitch.
Which just means maybe the pink bows aren't such a terrible thing after all if they spark a conversation or two.