Belated...

[highlyeccentric]

I just noticed that my Stuff To Blog list has had this sitting in it for a while, and it's now a bit late for a Breast Cancer Awareness Month heads-up. But what the hell, I'm a student. We don't understand things like punctuality.

Last month was Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Stephanie Trigg, who has over the last year or so blogged her own experiences with breast cancer and academia, wrote an opinion piece for the Melbourne Age on October 21st.

I should come clean and admit that I am a direct beneficiary of breast cancer research... 
I expect some of the funding comes from pink sales and donations...
But this doesn't mean I can't be critical of the construction of femininity that characterises pink consumerism. It is not just in the colour — the pink of the Barbie aisle in a toy shop — that breast cancer promotions often infantilise women. It is the distinctive coding of the feminine as principally concerned with jewellery, clothes and cosmetics. What is on sale is the generalised clutter of the bedroom, often in the form of teddy bears and fluffy toys. It is a far cry from the womanly strength of the feminist purple of the 1970s. As Barbara Ehrenreich commented in a famous essay: "Certainly men diagnosed with prostate cancer do not receive gifts of Matchbox cars."
Most insidious, though, is the concept of "shopping for the cure", and the way it naturalises the idea of women as gleeful consumers of fashion and luxury items. There are lots of breast cancer promotions that don't depend on this idea, and many avenues for donating that assume that giving is its own reward. This is the case with many other health and wellbeing fund-raisers; we know Australians are generous. So why should breast cancer be so strongly associated with shopping?

Good questions. Go, read her article.

Comments

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

That is something that has long rankled with me about Breast Cancer Awareness stuff, and with many females of my acquaintance. Mostly because they detested pink, I think, but still.

Why must all women become children when they are diagnosed with a deadly illness?

...mind, I'd probably glee over a matchbox car if I were diagnosed with prostate cancer. I'd prefer some Transformers, mind. *is a nerd*

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

if you are ever diagnosed with prostate cancer, i will personally buy you a matchbox car. and donate the value of one matchbox car to an appropriate research institution.

how's that?

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

*giggles, claps hands*

Yay!

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

*sigh of relief*
glad i'm not the only one to be pissed off by the marketing of the whole thing.

pink! ridiculous.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

*rolls eyes*

yup.

[ulfruna.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I'm particularly bothered by the 'pink' business, but then again I never really think too deeply on gender stereotypes and what have you. I'm definitely far, far more aware of breast cancer/research/fundraising/etc than I would have been without it, and I don't really associate it with shopping, despite the fact that every second package in Woollies at the moment has a pink alternative. So I suppose, from the perspective of someone who essentially lives in a box and isn't easily rankled, their marketing is working. ;)

I guess part of me just thinks; what the hell, go for it! Five cents from that strawberry Kit-Kat going to Breast Cancer research is five cents that wouldn't have otherwise gone their way, and the pink packet just lets you know where it's going.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

yeah, i'm not so sure about the "gender stereotyping" side of it... but the whole Sell-A-Cause thing annoys me. Breastcancer Awareness isn't so bad, at least there's an identifiable problem and research going into fixing it. the Dove "Campaign For Real Beauty" thing *really* ticked me off, though.

[ulfruna.livejournal.com]

I'm only very vaguely aware of the Dove campaign, and only because B sent me a couple of youtube clips that, quite frankly, creeped the hell out of me. Hah. What's the deal with it?