The good cause has become more elusive nowadays, what with capitalism and politics and all that nonsense. Take breast cancer for example. Like most life-threatening diseases, this one is pretty grim. Clearly, raising awareness about it is a good cause; one worthy of giving your hard-earned money in hopes that it’ll go to finding a cure. But in addition to that feel-good sense of altruism, breast cancer sugar daddies usually walk away with a shiny pink trinket. Do the countless advertisements urging you to buy pink remind consumers of the importance of this good cause, or simply make the devastation of the disease more palatable?
The well known think pink campaign, which began with Estee Lauder 14 years ago, doesn’t exactly pull on your heartstrings. Ads like those for Payless feature happy female shoppers followed by the quick reminder to pick up a pink cell phone charm, the proceeds of which go to The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Faced with images like these, it can be pretty easy to forget the pallid faces of those actually affected by breast cancer.
Then again, these light and fluffy advertisements may well raise more dollars than ones that make you want to become an ascetic. Not to mention the fact that marketing a color to countless corporations that, in turn, will market products to the masses, may well bring in more revenue than traditional pleas for donations. The aforementioned Payless cell phone charm sales alone will result in a minimum of $100,000 to The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. And Payless has already sold out of the trinkets.
Komen’s Million Dollar Council, consisting of 20 corporations, each contributing at least one million dollars, includes KitchenAid (with special pink mix masters), Ford (with a line of Warriors in Pink apparel) and New Balance (with a Lace Up for the Cure collection in, you guessed it, pink), among others. Not to mention Komen’s 20-plus corporate partners who didn’t make it onto the Million Dollar Council, and all those pushers of pink allied with other foundations, like the Young Survival Coalition and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Estee Lauder has pledged to donate a minimum of $500,000 from the sale of their exclusive Pink Ribbon 2006 products to the latter. Considering these and other myriad purveyors of the pink stuff, that’s a lot of dough. But, of course, that’s the point, and the dough is, after all, for an undeniably good cause.
Jean Maza, Public Relations Specialist to The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, comments, “Without our partners, we wouldn’t be able to support the number of grants and community-based programs we do.” She continues, “How our partners determine their marketing strategies for pink programs and products is up to them. Their creativity and support of the breast cancer cause in past years has indeed helped raise awareness, raise money and make millions of people aware of the importance of early detection.” So, even if the pink makes breast cancer seem less serious than, say, PMS, it’s still doing it’s job.
Shelly Bayewitch, 53, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992, (coincidentally, the same year that pink products were first launched) thinks so. She had a double mastectomy in 1993, after which her doctors found over 30 lymph nodes to be clear of the cancer and decided no further action was necessary—no chemo, no radiation. She says, “And so I went on my merry [way] believing I was one of the ‘lucky ones.’ I had breast cancer and I beat it! Or so I thought for the next seven years when I went to the doctor with a terrible pain in my left arm … I now had metastatic disease to the bone marrow.” She’s been on chemotherapy since December 2000 and has experienced a host of unimaginable medical complications.
When asked if the commercialism of the think pink campaign numbs people to the seriousness of the disease, Bayewitch answers, “Buying ‘pink’ doesn’t do very much to educate, but I don’t think it numbs people either. It’s excellent at raising money, which is wonderful.” She adds, “I don’t think it [various pink campaigns] is meant to really ‘do anything’ for women who have the disease other than make them feel empowered by raising money. … There are other support organizations to serve women with BC. Pink campaigns have a different purpose. To reach their goals, not putting a ‘face’ to the disease is probably a wise one.”
Indeed, maybe the good people behind breast cancer awareness fear that depressed donors give less than happy consumers. Presenting real, live women who have or are suffering would be much more of a downer for potential philanthropists than pushing an army of pink chotchkies. And let’s not forget that more money means a better chance of finding a cure, right? In that case, pink should be everyone’s favorite color.
