breast cancer awareness month
October is breast cancer awareness month. Everywhere you look you’ll see pink! Pink ribbons, pink labels, pink products, pink stickers and pink jars saying, “help raise awareness” or “support the cure”.
While the sentiment behind the campaign feels warm + thoughtful, most of the strategy designed to “‘support" breast cancer survivors and raise awareness is not at all helpful!!!
Let’s start with PINK WASHING. Pink washing is when a company or organization claims to care about breast cancer prevention by promoting a pink ribbon product, BUT produces/manufactures or sells products that are linked to the disease, and proven to cause breast cancer.
Due to pink washing, products adorned with pink ribbons (and pink things in general) have saturated the market! Sadly, in most cases, the only one benefiting from the sales of pink merchandise is the seller AND most of these campaigns donate very little (if any) to proceeds.
Second, raising awareness isn’t getting us very far. Breast cancer rates have gone up right along with awareness. Most are aware that breast cancer is a huge issue. We need TRUTH and REALITY! We need to change the conversation from awareness to PREVENTION and we need to stop thinking that screening and early detection is enough. It’s not! Breast cancer screening is at an all-time high, but breast cancer rates continue to rise.
Why? WE ARE MISSING THE MARK!
Screening and/or early detection does not equal cure or prevention. Raising awareness and putting pink labels on as many products as possible does very little to prevent or address the root cause. It’s time to stop giving money to organizations that are selling products to people that are linked to cancer. It’s time for a different conversation. Perhaps a more uncomfortable one.
The truth is, we need to stop doing the things that we know cause cancer and turning a blind eye and waiting for the cure.
The cure is prevention!
And the responsibility is ours! #preventionisthecure
SIMILAR POSTS
