SALON

Wednesday, May 30, 2012 11:45 AM UTC

The tyranny of pink

The author behind a new documentary tells Salon how breast cancer got cute and where Susan G. Komen lost its way

By

Topics: Breast cancer, Susan G. Komen Foundation, Documentaries,

The tyranny of pinkA still from "Pink Ribbons, Inc."

Why wait for October for breast cancer awareness? There couldn’t be a more perfect moment for director Lea Pool’s new documentary “Pink Ribbons Inc.” — a searing, passionate and deeply human examination of the warping of a cause.

It’s been a shaky year for the pink. In January, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the undisputed center of the breast cancer universe in its be-ribboned, Schiaparelli-hued incarnation, made the spectacular misstep of attempting to withdraw funding for breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood. Though the howls of public outrage forced the foundation to back off – and prompted the resignation of its vice president for public policy, Karen Handel — the debacle was just the latest and most grotesque move from an organization ostensibly devoted to women’s health. There was the ill-advised, high-profile partnership with Kentucky Fried Chicken, a name not exactly synonymous with good health. There was a saturation of merchandising, including a perfume of questionable toxicity. No wonder registrations for this year’s Race for the Cure are down, as Komen continues to be dogged by questions about its integrity.

Now comes another blow to what author Barbara Ehrenreich (who has written with fabulous brio about her own experiences in the trenches) shudderingly calls “breast cancer culture.” Based on Samantha King’s book “Pink Ribbons Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy,” the new documentary manages to be devastatingly persuasive about the futility of buying, say, an auto manufacturer’s “Warriors in Pink” gear as a gesture toward stamping out disease, while remaining profoundly sensitive to the good intentions of someone who might. Pool’s cool juxtapositions are incredibly convincing — in the way she presents the spirited, moving testimonials of pink-clad women running and walking at various events for “the cure” right beside the glib hucksters at the Fuze Tea and Yoplait event booths, oblivious to the piles of garbage rising in their wake.

Interspersed throughout, there are interviews with everyone who’s anyone in breast cancer. There’s Ehrenreich, who blisteringly attacks the “sentimentality” of cutesy breast cancer campaigns by saying, “I’m not six years old.” There’s Dr. Susan Love, who questions why, with billions of dollars going toward “the cure,” we’re still using “slash, burn and poison” treatments and spending next to nothing on investigating the causes of the disease. There’s Susan G. Komen CEO and founder Nancy Brinker, who ominously says, “There’s not enough pink” saturating our culture. And, hauntingly, there are the members of an Austin, Texas, support group for women with Stage 4 cancer, who describe the exhausting pressure of having a disease with such an upbeat, “Yes we can!” identity. “You’re the angel of death,” says one. “You’re the elephant in the room.” Put together, the film makes an exasperating, infuriating argument for why we must, as Susan Love says, “learn to ask questions and not just raise money and hand it over.”

Reducing breast cancer – a complex disease with different manifestations – into a single entity for which there could be a single, magic bullet “cure” may sell T-shirts and mammogram machines. But it doesn’t begin to address the insidiously complicated nature of cancer or why it strikes women in the first place. Yet there’s money to be made in the notion of a “cure” – a slippery word you will be hard pressed to find anyone in the world of cancer treatment ever using. But “Race for the No Evidence of Disease” just doesn’t have the same easy ring to it. Nor does the expensive, unsexy environmental and social change required to identify and eliminate the roots of cancer.

There was once a time, in the distant past, when breast cancer was not a cheerful lipstick shade. It was not warm or soft or fuzzy. It was not an opportunity for gratuitous ogling wrapped up in the guise of “saving the boobies.” And it sure as hell wasn’t the best thing to happen to consumerism since Christmas. But as the film makes clear, while the disease itself remains as vicious and harrowing as ever, the response to it has evolved. And what began as activism about a serious women’s health issue has morphed into an excuse to go shopping.

As “Pink Ribbons, Inc.” author Samantha King tells Salon, “People now understand disease through the lens of consumption. I talk to people who can’t really think of doing good work outside of selling or buying stuff. That’s not their experience. They haven’t been exposed to alternatives.” She goes on to explain, “Thirty years ago, it would have been unfathomable that breast cancer could generate this much support and attention and corporate funding. There was a lot of feminist awareness in the ’80s around breast cancer and women’s health. And some very smart people caught on to that and appropriated it and turned it into a marketable product.”

As the film tidily illuminates, ever since the Reagan era of corporate philanthropy, “cause marketing” has become a massive growth industry. With women representing 80 percent of consumer dollars spent, wrapping one’s products and services in the guise of taking care of the ladies is just “business as usual.” If that business includes breast cancer drug manufacturers who also happen to be in the business of pesticides and pink-ribboned cosmetics that contain unregulated chemicals like formaldehyde, well, what’s the problem? And if there’s a grand gesture to be made in bathing the Empire State Building in bright pink light or littering Times Square with pink ticker tape, who cares if that has squat to do with the frightening reality of illness?

One of the most revealing moments of the film comes when an upbeat marcher for the cure declares her reason for being there. “You feel helpless and you want to do something,” she explains. But what if that something is worse than nothing? What if it’s doing more to line a CEO’s pocket than to assure that fewer women will suffer and die from this monster? What if, instead, it’s subjecting women with cancer to what Ehrenreich calls “the horrible tyranny of cheerfulness”?

As King tells Salon, “Raising money doesn’t automatically equate change. In fact, the way that this particular fundraising phenomenon works is to reinforce the status quo. It funds the same kinds of research that ask the same kinds of questions instead of research that might look into prevention or reduce the incidence rate.” But she understands the insidious appeal of pink. “People are really busy,” she says, “and this stuff is fun and makes you feel nice. But that kind of solidarity and community is fleeting, and it doesn’t sustain a political movement. I hope this film changes the conversation around what it really means to do good.”

“Pink Ribbons, Inc.” opens in New York and Los Angeles on June 1, and in selected cities throughout June.

Mary Elizabeth Williams

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • This photo. President Barack Obama has a laugh during the unveiling of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Tx., Thursday. Former first lady Barbara Bush, who candidly admitted this week we've had enough Bushes in the White House, is unamused.
    Reuters/Jason Reed

  • Rescue workers converge Wednesday in Savar, Bangladesh, where the collapse of a garment building killed more than 300. Factory owners had ignored police orders to vacate the work site the day before.
    AP/A.M. Ahad

  • Police gather Wednesday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to honor campus officer Sean Collier, who was allegedly killed in a shootout with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects last week.
    AP/Elise Amendola

  • Police tape closes the site of a car bomb that targeted the French embassy in Libya Tuesday. The explosion wounded two French guards and caused extensive damage to Tripoli's upscale al-Andalus neighborhood.
    AP/Abdul Majeed Forjani

  • Protestors rage outside the residence of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday following the rape of a 5-year-old girl in New Delhi. The girl was allegedly kidnapped and tortured before being abandoned in a locked room for two days.
    AP/Manish Swarup

  • Clarksville, Mo., residents sit in a life boat Monday after a Mississippi River flooding, the 13th worst on record.
    AP/Jeff Roberson

  • Workers pause Wednesday for a memorial service at the site of the West, Tx., fertilizer plant explosion, which killed 14 people and left a crater more than 90 feet wide.
    AP/The San Antonio Express-News, Tom Reel

  • Aerial footage of the devastation following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in China's Sichuan province last Saturday. At least 180 people were killed and as many as 11,000 injured in the quake.
    AP/Liu Yinghua

  • On Wednesday, Hazmat-suited federal authorities search a martial arts studio in Tupelo, Miss., once operated by Everett Dutschke, the newest lead in the increasingly twisty ricin case. Last week, President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker, R.-Miss., and a Mississippi judge were each sent letters laced with the deadly poison.
    AP/Rogelio V. Solis

  • The lighting of Freedom Hall at the George W. Bush Presidential Center Thursday is celebrated with (what else but) red, white and blue fireworks.
    AP/David J. Phillip

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 25 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Facebook has been used to find ex-lovers, childhood BFFs or the one who got away. He used it to find the guy who, without his consent, made him his drug mule.
253 points254 points | 24 comments
vote
“This could be a career ender for Michele Bachmann”
178 points179 points | 78 comments
vote
Poll: 3 in 10 voters say “armed revolution might be necessary” - 29% say they believe they'll have to act "in order to protect our liberties" in the next few years
46 points47 points | 18 comments
vote
"New evidence reveals big banks still illegally foreclosing on thousands of homes – and weak settlement allows it."
27 points28 points | comment
vote
Are millennials delusional? New research suggests that members of "Generation Me" are warped by a profound sense of entitlement
28 points29 points | 20 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: "The Shelter Cycle": Raised in a cult

Recommendations