I never liked the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

[p_zeitgeist]

All that pink, you know? And that relentless sick-making commercialism. But now I have a better reason to dislike them

Comments

[karadin]

The whole pink thing is now a huge industry, and no one watches who makes goods and how much money actually goes to the cause.

[p_zeitgeist]

And it repels me more with every passing year. Which is a neat trick, considering how repelled I was when I first encountered it as a new breast cancer patient. All that fluffy pink cloud, and all of its messaging about how devastated you must be about this blow to your sacred femininity, but don't worry, you can still be cute! Here, have something feminine! and pink!! Ick, ick, ick.

I realize it's irrational of me -- there's no direct connection between the Cult of Pink and forced pregnancy -- but on a gut level? This turns out to not even surprise me.

[karadin]

For a while the AIDS red ribbon was like this, but actually, it never put me off supporting/giving money to charities. My mother, my grandmother, my spouse's mother all died from breast cancer. I'm glad you've survived.

[vschanoes]

I completely agree. Have you read--you must have--Barbara Ehrenreich's awesome essay "Welcome to Cancerland," about her experiences being diagnosed with breast cancer and loathing the fluffy pinkness of it all? I believe it ends with something like "If I at least must go into that great final night, I will not do so with a pink teddy bear under my arm." She reworked it into the first chapter in Bright-Sided, which is a book of hers that I love.