{"id":335,"date":"2011-09-18T18:30:59","date_gmt":"2011-09-18T18:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarabrenner.net\/?p=335"},"modified":"2011-09-18T18:33:14","modified_gmt":"2011-09-18T18:33:14","slug":"pink-ribbons-and-lou-gehrig-time-to-bury-useless-symbols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/barbarabrenner.net\/?p=335","title":{"rendered":"Pink Ribbons and Lou Gehrig: Time to Bury Useless Symbols"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you like this blog, send it to 3 (or more) of your friends and encourage them to sign up<\/em>. Let\u2019s keep the conversation going!<\/em><\/p>\n

People who have known me a while know that I\u2019m no fan of pink ribbons as a symbol for breast cancer. I have the same feeling about baseball slugger Lou Gehrig as a symbol for ALS. It\u2019s time to let go of symbols that have become useless, or, worse, misleading.<\/p>\n

A Brief History of Breast Cancer\u2019s Pink Ribbon<\/span><\/p>\n

The first breast cancer ribbon was not pink.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Charlotte Haley's Ribbon<\/p><\/div>\n

It was salmon colored. It was created by a woman named Charlotte Haley, who had seen a lot of her family struggle with breast cancer. Charlotte wanted to see more done to address the breast cancer epidemic. Inspired by the AIDS ribbon, she created salmon colored ribbons out of cloth, put 5 of them on a postcard encouraging people to contact their elected representatives, and sold the postcards for 5 bucks each so she could make more.<\/p>\n

Est\u00e9e Lauder, the cosmetics company, and Self Magazine, <\/em>a woman\u2019s publication, quickly recognized the profit-making possibilities of the ribbon. They approached Charlotte, claiming that they cared deeply about women and wanted to make her ribbon the international symbol of breast cancer. Charlotte thought that was more about the companies\u2019 bottom lines than about women\u2019s lives, and refused to partner with them.<\/p>\n

The companies were advised by their lawyers that they could use a ribbon; they should just find another color. So the companies asked focus groups of women to identify the color \"\"<\/a>or colors that were most reassuring, non-threatening, and comforting \u2013 everything a breast cancer diagnosis is not<\/em>. The color they came up with was pink.<\/p>\n

The Komen Foundation (now called the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation) tried to trademark the pink ribbon. When that failed, everyone and their grandmother starting using it to symbolize breast cancer. Briefly put, because anyone can use the pink ribbon, everyone does, from marketers of products to huge organizations. The pink ribbon has made it possible for breast cancer to become the poster child of cause marketing by companies trying to improve their sales by linking their products to the breast cancer cause. Some people and companies merely sell ribbons (made of everything from cloth to platinum and diamonds) and keep all the revenues; others use it promote sales of other products (everything from toilet paper, to cars, to<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

I cannot make this stuff up<\/p><\/div>\n

guns) by promising to donate a \u201cportion\u201d of the proceeds to breast cancer research.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

This is not your imagination<\/p><\/div>\n

Sometimes the ribbons are placed on products that are bad for our health. For more information on the exploitation of the pink ribbon, see www.thinkbeforeyoupink.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How Many Things Can a Pink Ribbon Cover Up?<\/span><\/p>\n

Billions of dollars have been raised in the name of breast cancer research. We don\u2019t know \"\"<\/a>how much of that money actually goes to research. We don\u2019t know what kinds of research are funded with that money. And the research funders often tout how much they have spent without every reporting whether the research has benefited women\u2019s lives. What we do know is that the epidemic rages on, the incidence of breast cancer continues to increase, and the death rate does not decline.<\/p>\n

When you ask most people what they know about breast cancer, if they can say anything, they will say something about the importance of mammograms. But there is so much more to breast cancer. To name just a few things that the pink ribbon doesn\u2019t represent: the limits of early detection, the ineffectiveness of current treatments to keep women with metastatic breast cancer from dying, the environmental triggers of the disease (only at most 10% of breast cancer is caused by an inherited genetic mutation), and the racial inequities in both the incidence and mortality rate from breast cancer.<\/p>\n

Many of these issues are illuminated in the new documentary from the National Film Board of Canada, Pink Ribbons, Inc.<\/em><\/a>, by director L\u00e9a Pool and producer Ravida Din. The film was inspired by a book by of the same title by Samantha King. The film is now being shown at film festivals outside the United States. It should be in theaters here by February, 2012.<\/p>\n

If we\u2019re going to focus on what needs to happen to end the scourge of breast cancer, we need to find a new symbol, one that actually conveys the impact of the disease on people\u2019s lives and that doesn\u2019t lend itself so readily to corporate exploitation or to covering up the realities of the breast cancer.<\/p>\n

Maybe if we put our heads together we can come up with a new symbol. Ideas?<\/p>\n

Lou Gehrig: May He Rest in Peace?<\/span><\/p>\n

Lou Gehrig died of ALS in 1941at the age of 37. Many people who think they have never heard of ALS have heard of Lou Gehrig\u2019s Disease, the \u201cpopular\u201d name for this devastating illness. By now, more people probably know Gehrig for his illness than his baseball prowess<\/p>\n

Gehrig died more than 70 years ago. Since he died, many more people, some of them quite well known, have died of ALS. Yet, in nearly every story about ALS, Gehrig\u2019s name appears, often with a picture of the baseball player standing hale and hearty with a<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The famous Lou Gehrig<\/p><\/div>\n

baseball bat in his hand. He doesn\u2019t look sick, let alone devastated by the physical ravages of ALS.<\/p>\n

Is it any wonder that the public doesn\u2019t understand what ALS is when the symbol they see is so unrelated to the realities of the disease? Wouldn\u2019t a better symbol convey the real life circumstances of 21st<\/sup> century people with ALS? Just because \u201cLou Gehrig\u201d is easier to say than amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, that doesn\u2019t mean Lou Gehrig is a good symbol for \"\"<\/a>the disease today.<\/p>\n

Good Symbols for a Change<\/span><\/p>\n

For people to be motivated to care about and work to change either breast cancer or ALS, the need to understand what these illnesses are and how they affect people today. Appropriate symbols can help convey that understanding.\u00a0 Let\u2019s find and use symbols that at least hint at the realities so that people might — just might — be motivated to change them.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Barbara A. Brenner 2011<\/p>\n