When I wrote yesterday’s post, I did not intend to whitewash the topic. I used to think that any campaign for breast cancer awareness was positive. I rarely object to art that is controversial because often it riles up viewers in a way that can evoke provocative thinking. I often tried to view some of the campaigns for breast cancer awareness similarly. If the campaign succeeded in garnering attention for breast cancer, the message was less important than the end result.
Here I am now, though, two and a half years out with metastatic breast cancer. Do you know how many times I have heard “You have breast cancer? Oh, that’s not a serious cancer.” “You have breast cancer. At least they cured that cancer.” “Breast cancer? Aren’t you lucky it’s not as bad as other cancers.” I am not usually a woman who is lost for words, but I can tell you that any time someone tosses a statement like that at me it blindsides me speechless. And I am not unique. Every person with metastatic breast cancer has a similar stories.
Pinkwashing in itself is fine. It does provide support to a lot of women, especially women with primary breast cancer. It helps many celebrate the completion of treatment and to deal with a terrifying time of their lives. It provides funding for testing for uninsured patients, and it also provides educational programs for others undergoing treatment. No one wishes to affect these activities.
What many of us would like to see falls easily into three major areas.
First, we would like to see an end to the campaigns that trivialize breast cancer. Ask the teachers in most of the classrooms where teen and pre-teens wear “i love boobies” bracelets about what the level of awareness is of breast cancer. Look at the comments on Twitter among kids about “i love boobies” bracelets. You will find zero comments there about breast cancer but oodles of comments ranging from the colors offered for the bracelets to what a joke it is when someone does not wear the bracelet to any number of suggestive comments about size and other “i love boobies” references. Is this breast cancer awareness? Ask anyone wearing one of those bracelets what they learned about breast cancer when they acquired one from eBay or Amazon. Surprisingly, merchandise like this comes with no card citing facts or any other information on breast cancer. So, again, I ask: is this breast cancer awareness?
Second, we would like to know that the organizations who are well equipped and efficient at running campaigns on behalf of breast cancer have a modicum of knowledge and provide support to those in the breast cancer community who fall into the hidden chasm of high risk. When one of us calls said organizations and asks about services or support they have for metastatic breast cancer, for example, the answer is often this: “Metastatic? Um, we don’t really have anything specifically for that. Are you a survivor? Are you done with your treatment? We have meetings for those people.” Call your local office just for kicks and see what kind of answer you get to that question. Is it not unforgivable that an organization purporting to be expert in providing support to people with breast cancer have neither staff nor programs that address the most dire prognoses of the disease?
Third, we would like to know that the organizations who successfully raise funds for breast cancer donate money to research for the population of patients who are endangered: metastatic breast cancer. MetaVivor, who practices what it preaches, suggests that 30 percent of funding go to research for metastatic breast cancer because 30 percent of all patients with primary breast cancer will have a recurrence. Researchers desperately need funding to conduct those obscure studies that might just pin down the combination of switches to turn cancer’s growth off while reversing its inability to die.
I hope that anyone reading these posts will hear the intent and understand that many of us want awareness of breast cancer to be just that: awareness of what breast cancer is and is not. Forget the cute or, worse, silly phrases that titillate and make light of a disease that causes long-term pain, suffering and death. If “i love boobies” and “save the tatas” have serious messages, why do we not see the equivalent messages for prostate and colon cancer.
5 6 7 8
© 2004–2011 Donna Peach. All rights reserved.
When I wrote yesterday’s post, I did not intend to whitewash the topic. I used to think that any campaign for breast cancer awareness was positive. I rarely object to art that is controversial because often it riles up viewers in a way that can evoke provocative thinking. I often tried to view some of the campaigns for breast cancer awareness similarly. If the campaign succeeded in garnering attention for breast cancer, the message was less important than the end result.
Here I am now, though, two and a half years out with metastatic breast cancer. Do you know how many times I have heard “You have breast cancer? Oh, that’s not a serious cancer.” “You have breast cancer. At least they cured that cancer.” “Breast cancer? Aren’t you lucky it’s not as bad as other cancers.” I am not usually a woman who is lost for words, but I can tell you that any time someone tosses a statement like that at me it blindsides me speechless. And I am not unique. Every person with metastatic breast cancer has a similar stories.
Pinkwashing in itself is fine. It does provide support to a lot of women, especially women with primary breast cancer. It helps many celebrate the completion of treatment and to deal with a terrifying time of their lives. It provides funding for testing for uninsured patients, and it also provides educational programs for others undergoing treatment. No one wishes to affect these activities.
What many of us would like to see falls easily into three major areas.
First, we would like to see an end to the campaigns that trivialize breast cancer. Ask the teachers in most of the classrooms where teen and pre-teens wear “i love boobies” bracelets about what the level of awareness is of breast cancer. Look at the comments on Twitter among kids about “i love boobies” bracelets. You will find zero comments there about breast cancer but oodles of comments ranging from the colors offered for the bracelets to what a joke it is when someone does not wear the bracelet to any number of suggestive comments about size and other “i love boobies” references. Is this breast cancer awareness? Ask anyone wearing one of those bracelets what they learned about breast cancer when they acquired one from eBay or Amazon. Surprisingly, merchandise like this comes with no card citing facts or any other information on breast cancer. So, again, I ask: is this breast cancer awareness?
Second, we would like to know that the organizations who are well equipped and efficient at running campaigns on behalf of breast cancer have a modicum of knowledge and provide support to those in the breast cancer community who fall into the hidden chasm of high risk. When one of us calls said organizations and asks about services or support they have for metastatic breast cancer, for example, the answer is often this: “Metastatic? Um, we don’t really have anything specifically for that. Are you a survivor? Are you done with your treatment? We have meetings for those people.” Call your local office just for kicks and see what kind of answer you get to that question. Is it not unforgivable that an organization purporting to be expert in providing support to people with breast cancer have neither staff nor programs that address the most dire prognoses of the disease?
Third, we would like to know that the organizations who successfully raise funds for breast cancer donate money to research for the population of patients who are endangered: metastatic breast cancer. MetaVivor, who practices what it preaches, suggests that 30 percent of funding go to research for metastatic breast cancer because 30 percent of all patients with primary breast cancer will have a recurrence. Researchers desperately need funding to conduct those obscure studies that might just pin down the combination of switches to turn cancer’s growth off while reversing its inability to die.
I hope that anyone reading these posts will hear the intent and understand that many of us want awareness of breast cancer to be just that: awareness of what breast cancer is and is not. Forget the cute or, worse, silly phrases that titillate and make light of a disease that causes long-term pain, suffering and death. If “i love boobies” and “save the tatas” have serious messages, why do we not see the equivalent messages for prostate and colon cancer.
5 6 7 8
© 2004–2011 Donna Peach. All rights reserved.