The Komen Story Take-Away

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Feb 102012
 

There are many take-aways from the recent Komen fiasco.  Not that there has ever, in anything vaguely resembling recent history (say the last 5000 years or so) been a time when women’s health and rights have not been under siege, but the level of attacks the last few years has been horrifying and women have been working full tilt to combat them.  While there have been a lot of successes, there have been dreadful losses too, perhaps the worst of which is that we haven’t been able to stem the tide of these attacks.  But the one thing that we most certainly have done is found amazing ways to work together on these issues and very effective ways to respond quickly and loudly.

What I see in the way that we reacted to the Komen debacle is perhaps the perfection of our coming together to say,

NO MORE!  We have had enough!

For me, the Komen story has been deja vu.  Many of the issues that have been highlighted by the many wonderful people who have documented this story are things I have written about before and I am so glad they have finally been aired in a way that has reached critical mass.

Without hesitation, I can say that of all the many topics I have ever written about, the Komen story is one of my least favorites.  But yet I have felt compelled to write about it again  last week and I am gratified by the attention the two pieces that I wrote on this blog received.  Today The Washington Post ran a piece that linked to my work and last week, the Institute for Public Accuracy included a link to one of them in a press release, the result of which was requests for numerous interviews with radio stations and print media from all corners of the country.  Here are links to two of them:

Sonali Kolhatkar interview with FPN’s Lucinda Marshall on KPFK’s Uprising

FPN’s Lucinda Marshall interviewed on WORT’s Her Turn

Let’s take what we’ve learned from the Komen incident about raising our voices together and keep this rolling because enough is enough, women’s rights are human rights and our lives and our health can no longer be used as political footballs!

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 Posted by Fempeace on February 10, 2012

Curing The Pink Stink

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Feb 032012
 

After several days of unrelenting fury (much of it from long-time loyal supporters)  that has severely damaged their credibility as our boobs’ best friend, Komen For The Cure has reconsidered its decision regarding funding Planned Parenthood (albeit with a statement that definitely leaves significant wiggle room). In the wake of what may well be the worst case of accidental re-branding ever by the organization that pinkified the world and took cause branding to epic proportions, we need to take a hard look at  Komen’s  very unhealthy advocacy and re-examine what if any role they should play in supporting women’s health.

As angry women have said repeatedly the last few days, it is not acceptable to advocate for breast health at the expense of our overall health.  The reason we have stood by Planned Parenthood is because it is absolutely essential to fund them because they provide essential healthcare for women that, for many, is simply not available elsewhere.  And yes, 3% of that care is providing abortions.  But as we insist on funding Planned Parenthood, what we really need to be asking is why it is that we are in a situation where we must depend on Planned Parenthood for these services that are frequently unavailable or unaffordable elsewhere.  The answer or course is the unrelenting attack on women’s health in Congress and state legislatures and a lack of single payer healthcare in this country (which Komen has reportedly lobbied against).

Over the years, Komen has accepted massive support from corporations that make all manner of products that have been linked to cancer and hawked all manner of pink stuff with cancer-related ingredients.  They have hammered about the need to be aware and get annual mammograms even while study after study has questioned this recommendation (and oh yeah, they have accepted contributions from the companies that make mammography equipment).

Komen has told us that being aware and early detection are the key, even though in many cases, this simply makes no difference in outcome.  They have hawked (and even trademarked) ” for the cure” (a trademark they have spent millions of  the dollars we have raced to raise defending), the shockingly expensive drugs that treat this awful disease, while taking large contributions from drug makers.

Komen has told us that we have to take personal responsibility while focusing on treatment, rather than looking for the cause while they take contributions from chemical companies, car companies and others who pollute the planet with  cancerous toxins.

To state the obvious, this is not healthy.  What is needed in this country is, first and foremost, single payer healthcare that provides full reproductive health services to everyone.  Secondly, as organizations like Breast Cancer Action and people like Dr. Susan Love have repeatedly said, we need to figure out what causes breast cancer and work to stop it, not just throw expensive treatments at it.  It also should be pointed out that breast cancer isn’t even the leading cause of death in women.  Heart disease is.  Interestingly, while more women get breast cancer than lung cancer, more women die of lung cancer which is far more likely to be deadly.  But breast cancer gets the attention and the money because diseased or not, we find boobs titilating.  But indulging in that fascination rather than prioritizing our efforts to address the diseases with higher mortality rates is literally killing women.

So enough with Komen and their pink guns and buckets of chicken and toxic signature fragrances.  It is time to demand full universal healthcare, (including reproductive health services) and a responsible medical funding policy, and to refuse to be complicit with the damaging ethos of pink ribbons.

–Lucinda Marshall

 

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 Posted by Fempeace on February 3, 2012

Oil Changes For The Cure

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Oct 092011
 

Before I write another word, I feel a need to apologize.  What you are about to see is about taking care of your car and curing cancer all at the same time and it is pink.  Very pink.  It  started with a banner ad that popped up on a website I was looking at this morning:

There is little I like less than companies who make things that are linked with cancer (such as car exhaust) making money on breast cancer cause branding and I couldn’t figure out how getting a $10 dollar rebate on a very pricey oil change was going to cure breast cancer, so much against my better judgement,  I clicked the ad.

Which led to this:

Wow, did they just up the ante on possibly the pinkest car ad ever?  Forget the oil change, now they are suggesting we have to buy a whole car?  Still not a word on how this fights breast cancer.  So I decided to go googling and found this:

Join the fight against Breast Cancer | Washington, MI

The copy below the banner reads,

When you submit a service rebate for service performed in October, you can help change a woman’s life when you elect to waive some or all of your eligible rebate(1). Whether it’s $5, $10 or $25. Chevrolet will contribute the money to the American Cancer Society®(2). Join Chevrolet in the fight against breast cancer.

Talk about generosity–if we buy their overpriced service, they will send our money to ACS.  Not one word about an actual donation from Chevrolet itself.

You can contact Chevrolet here and tell them what you think of their self-serving, ungenerous, pink-washed ad campaign here.  Chevrolet owes an apology to everyone who has ever had breast cancer and while we’re at it, a plan to cut cancer causing auto emissions.

—–

Chevy isn’t the only automaker to run campaigns like this.  I had to get new windshield wipers awhile back and the guy at the Toyota service center told me that half of the purchase price for the wipers would go to breast cancer.  I started loudly saying that I was opposed to companies that make cancer producing products doing this sort of cause branding and I’d prefer to buy the wipers at half the price.  Which they quickly agreed to if for no other reason than to get me to shut up. Of course half the price is what the wipers should have been in the first place, not the jacked up price that forces the customer to be generously overcharged so that the company looks like it cares.

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 Posted by Fempeace on October 9, 2011

Pink-Washed Profits

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Oct 022011
 

I had harbored a fantasy of enjoying at least one day of October before getting irritated by the Pepto pink bombardment of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month merchandising.  Alas, this was not to be  While the usefulness of suggesting that we all be aware of breast cancer is questionable (as in seriously, how can you not be aware), the lucrative cause-branding that goes with it is an unquestionable abomination and the ad circulars which were tucked into my Saturday morning Washington Post were tricked out in pink to the max.  Perhaps the worst was a multi-page Proctor&Gamble ad:

How Much Are You Really Donating?

P&G offers three ways to “give”–if you use one of the coupons, they’ll donate $.02.  If you spend $50, they’ll rebate you $10 and donate $10, and (they may regret this one) if you ‘like’ their Facebook page, they’ll give $.10 to the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NCBF), which funds mammograms for women who can’t afford them and research (although I couldn’t figure out research into what on their webpage).  Not my choice of the best way to address breast cancer, but for the sake of using this as a math problem, let’s say that donating to them is a good idea.

So off you go to your favorite store and buy Olay Regenerist Moisturizer which costs about $19.00 (quick price check on drugstore.com) and use the $3.00 coupon.  You spend $16.00, but how much of it goes to P&G and how much goes towards something breast cancer related?  Bottom line for NBCF–$.02  Bottom line for P&G–$15.98.  Now if you buy two moisturizers and something else that costs $10.00, then you spend  $40.00 after the rebate and NBCF gets $10.00.  But P&G is still the big winner with $30.00.  So mostly your hard earned cash has gone to enrich the coffers of P&G, not to a good cause.

The point is this, just because it is pink doesn’t mean it is helpful–yes it is good that corporations give to good causes, but let’s be clear that it is very, very profitable for them to do so.  If you really want to give money to address breast cancer, do some research, decide what organization is doing the most important work and send them a check unless you really were going to buy the moisturizer anyway (and if so, check to be sure that the products in it aren’t toxic or carcinogenic because it really blows how many companies use products like this to pinkwash themselves).

__________

PS–please feel free to share links to any pink offenders you may run across–let’s help call these boob sponging profiteers out.

 

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 Posted by Fempeace on October 2, 2011

Breast Cancer Action Asks You To Be The Billboard

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Nov 112010
 

So suppose you are a big ol’ pharmaceutical company with mega-expensive cancer drugs that you want to sell.  You’d want to make sure you always have a market for that lucrative product, right?  So you don’t actually want to cure cancer, just treat it, so adding a product that has been linked to cancer to your corporate lineup that has been linked to cancer would not be a contradiction.  Call it the circle of death–manufacture potential cancer causing products that might help create a market for your cancer treating products. As Breast Cancer Action points out, that is exactly what Eli Lilly is doing.

Eli Lilly has taken pinkwashing to a whole new level. By adding rBGH to the products they sell, Eli Lilly has completed its cancer profit circle: it creates cancer with rBGH, it sells cancer treatment drugs like Gemzar, and it sells a drug, Evista, to reduce the risk of breast cancer in women at high risk of the disease. Eli Lilly’s cancer drugs made $2,683,000,000 for the company in 2008. Its potentially carcinogenic dairy hormone made millions of dollars in the same year. Eli Lilly is milking cancer.

As part of their Eli Lilly is Milking Cancer campaign, they decided to put up billboards in Indianapolis which is where Lilly is headquartered.

The group planned to pressure Lilly to discontinue the drug by launching a billboard campaign in Indianapolis. The message: “Eli Lilly is making us sick. Tell them to stop.”Lamar, Clear Channel, CBS Outdoor and about seven other billboard agencies have rejected the ad over the past six weeks, said Angela Wall, spokeswoman for the group.

“We can’t even get a public message out there in Indianapolis,” Wall said. “Who’s holding the mouthpiece when it comes to national health?”

When officials at Lamar saw Lilly singled out, Lamar executive Chris Iverson said, they asked the health group to defend its claim.

“We didn’t feel they could stand behind their statement,” he said.

Right, that explains why rBGH has, “been banned entirely in Australia, Canada, Japan, and all 27 countries in the European Union.” As Breast Cancer Action points out, “Although there is not definitive proof that the use of rBGH leads to breast and other cancers, there is enough evidence now to take precautionary steps and to eliminate its use.”

Indeed. And when has absolute proof ever been a litmus test for billboards? Try driving down the main drag of wherever you live and test that theory out.  I let my fingers do the walking in Google images and there was no shortage of good examples.  This one was my particular favorite after 15 seconds of searching:

Yup, no question that is totally factual.  Not. Which brings us back to the Breast Cancer Action billboard.  BCA is asking that you use the image above as your profile picture on Facebook because who really needs a really expensive billboard in one mid-western city when you can post your message all over the internet instead.  So let’s help them out, add it to your blogs, twitter it, etc.

And finally, this brings me to my periodic rant about net neutrality and the importance of independent, women-positive media.  We don’t generally think of billboards as media but just like advertising in newspapers and on television and on the internet, they contribute to framing the messages we are are sold when corporate profit is the deciding factor. This morning my local paper showed up literally wrapped in a Humana add that you had to remove so that you could see the front page of the newspaper.  You couldn’t not look at it. Sure, you can turn off commercial television and radio and so on but if you want to get from here to there, chances are, you are going to go past a billboard–they are a potent creator of the public frame and when important messages like the one Breast Cancer Action is trying to share are banned, we all lose.

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 Posted by Fempeace on November 11, 2010
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