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RSS FeedMemo to the “Hippest Town in NJ:” Please Stop Painting Yourself Pink
Over the past couple of months, I tried to get a number of editors to bite on this story: the town of Redbank, NJ (which calls itself “hippest town in NJ” thereby, ipso facto, making it not) has painted itself pink “to raise awareness of the importance of breast cancer prevention, detection, and treatment.” I wanted to take apart the whole premise, possibly doing an annotated “memo” of its press release a la Harper’s. Couldn’t get anyone to go for it.
I was reminded of the concept again today by Anthony Moro, husband of Rachel Cheetham Moro, the author of The Cancer Culture Chronicles blog (and inspiration to activists everywhere) who died earlier this year of breast cancer. Rachel died in the hospital sponsoring this event. And she would have hated. it. As Anthony writes on the blog, “painting the town pink”:
…doesn’t help prevent death from breast cancer. More mammograms don’t lower mortality, awareness doesn’t cure disease. Mammograms and awareness certainly don’t help anybody dealing with advanced disease. Mammograms and awareness don’t provide any comfort from my grief, and their pink flags mock me daily. This stuff is in my face every day, and now it has a gala reception and celebrity appearances.
He is absolutely right. I have written this and written this over and over. Those of you interested in more effective breast cancer advocacy might want to check out Breast Cancer Action or the National Breast Cancer Coalition. Meanwhile, for the record, blow is my hall-of-shame annotation of the Redbank press release. And here is Rachel’s post on last year’s “Paint the Town Pink.”
Hi there –
I know you don’t traditionally cover local NJ stories, but this is something truly newsworthy to a nationwide audience, and any help in spreading the message would be much appreciated. Paint the Town Pink is a community-wide effort presented by Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, NJ to raise awareness of the importance of breast cancer prevention, detection, and treatment.
They say they are raising “awareness.” Of what? Well, number one, they say of how to prevent breast cancer. If they know how to do that, give them the Nobel Prize immediately: there is no scientifically proven way to prevent breast cancer. There are some things that may reduce risk—such as limiting alcohol consumption, avoiding hormone replacement—but prevention? Nope. They seem to be making the common (and detrimental) mistake of indicating that mammography prevents cancer. It doesn’t. It detects cancer.
Red Bank, in Monmouth County NJ, is regarded by many as “the hippest town in NJ.”
Said it before: calling yourself “hip” makes you ipso facto not.
Downtown Red Bank is situated along the banks of the Navesink River where numerous rock stars and movie stars have made their home.
Perhaps some of those hip movie and rock stars will become “aware” of how they’re being used to spend misinformation about breast cancer and do something that actually makes a difference in the fight against the disease.
Six years ago, Riverview Medical Center set forth on a breast health crusade, directed at encouraging women, aged 40 and over, to have their annual mammogram,
The necessity and efficacy of annual mammograms for women 40-49 is highly controversial and does not appear to confer any life-saving benefit. In 2009, the United States Preventive Services Task Force found that the risks of mammography outweighed the benefits for that age group its guidelines suggest that women in that age group who are of average or low risk discuss the value of their test with their physician. The unquestioning encouragement by Paint the Town Pink, however, would result in big profits for the hospital involved….
as well as to raise money to provide mammography to the uninsured and underserved in the community.
Okay, that’s nice, but more on this later.
In conjunction with the Women’s Center at Riverview, the mission behind the Paint the Town Pink campaign was to educate women about a very significant fact: that early detection is a woman’s best defense against breast cancer.
Stop. Right. There. Early detection a “defense” against cancer? “Defense,” again, implies that it prevents the disease. At best mammography detects breast cancer (and it misses tumors in up to 20% of cases). No responsible authority would say the test prevents it.
But perhaps they mean that early detection is your best defense against dying of breast cancer? Well….maybe. Here’s what’s important to understand (and what I keep harping on in my articles): You have to look at the kind of cancer mammography catches as well its impact on that cancer. Mammography is very good at finding early stage cancers called Ductal Carcainoma in Situ –which would only become invasive (hence life-threatening) 30% of the time. Yet since medical science does not yet know which DCIS cancer will become invasive all are equally aggressively treated. That means 70% of women with this sort of cancer did not need the disfiguring surgery or radiation they underwent. Nonetheless, pink ribbon advocates count these women as success stories—“survivors” of a cancer that would never have killed them.
The second kind of cancer mammography catches is the one we hope for: the kind that, if caught early, can be successfully treated. For this segment, mammography does indeed save lives. Yay mammography!
The third kind of cancer is the most aggressive. No matter how “early” it’s caught by mammography it is too late. Mammography has had no impact on the death rates from this form of cancer, which is why the actual number of women (and men) who die of cancer today—about 40,000 annually, including Rachel Cheetham Moro—is greater than it was in the 1980s. While the overall death rates as a percentage of those diagnosed has dropped (again in part because of mammography’s penchant for finding DCIS) The death rate for those with metastatic disease, the kind that will kill you, has not budged.
What started off as just one town (Red Bank), grew into three towns for 2011. For 2012, the number of towns has grown to NINE – making the 2012 event the most represented in the campaign’s history!
How nice: 9 towns now spread misinformation.
Many businesses throughout Monmouth County turn their towns into a vision of pink in May. They are enthusiastic about breast cancer education and gathering donations to help women who do not have insurance, or are under-insured. As a member of the Pink community, we have a unique opportunity to integrate this educational message into a woman’s daily routine as she shops and dines at the many businesses in these towns.
Swathing the town in pink and promoting mammography may not do much for women with cancer, but it’s a great way to boost profits for local businesses and make people feel good.
From high-end boutiques offering a “pink tag sale” on Jimmy Choo shoes, to restaurants offering drink specials and “pink menus,” to the Broadway Diner with a hand painted mural about mammography, these towns has embraced the event. We also strive to make the educational process fun through various events. Planned once again for this year is a community-wide kick-off event on May 5th called “Paint Everything Pink. This event draws more than 3,500 community members for a day of education and fun.
The growth of Paint the Town Pink into neighboring towns, the footprint extended in these communities, the expanding volunteer base, the compelling educational messages, the inspirational stories shared…
Pink campaigns tend to focus on what Gayle Sulik, author of Pink Ribbon Blues, calls the “she-roes” narrative: stories of warriors in heels who kick cancer’s butt (and look fab doing it). She-roes say what people want to hear: that not only have they survived cancer but the disease has made them better people and better women. It almost goes without saying that they do not contract late-stage disease, nor do they die.
…the creation of the Pink Fund…
The Pink Fund? What does it do?
and the desire by people to be part of something authentic, tangible, and meaningful takes Paint the Town Pink beyond the pink.
People really do want to be involved in something tangible and meaningful. It’s too bad this campaign does not fit that criteria.
Beyond the visually pink landscape, Paint the Town Pink has brought families together, neighbors together, and businesses and communities together, while organically spreading a very important message. After five successful years of Paint the Town Pink activities, funding is now available to cover 250 free mammograms in 2012!
What happens if one of those mammograms finds an abnormality or, God forbid, cancer? Those women will need follow-up procedures, possibly surgery, possibly radiation or chemotherapy or more. If they are uninsured or under-insured who will pay for that care? Free mammograms are nice, but then what?
We Need Your Help!
You can help us remind women of the importance of their annual mammogram in a fun and positive way! The idea is truly scalable and customizable. Ideas range from “pale pink” to “fuchsia” in scale. Here are some examples:
- Dress a member of your media team in pink in support of our campaign
- Broadcast the logo in pink
- Develop medical features about the prevention, detection, and new treatments for breast cancer, and how just because Breast Cancer Awareness Month is not until October, it should not be forgotten about the other 11 months of the year
I agree. Breast cancer is an issue all year long. But extending the dissemination of misinformation and profit-making should not be.
Think Before You Pink Toolkit available at Breast Cancer Action
You nailed it, Peggy. The pink parade is a charade that needs to stop. It is not helping us toward the real goal here: research for *real* prevention and *real* cures.
Bless you for posting this. In addition to BCA, Rachel was a big supporter of METAvivor, and I would invite everyone to visit this link & help, in a manner than is much more meaningful that pink-washing. Metastatic breast cancer is what killed Rachel and there is as yet no cure for it.
http://metavivor-blog.com/blog/2012/05/03/thirty-for-thirty/
Peggy,
Thank you for posting this. As Rachel pointed out, even the mission statement of her town’s campaign was/is flawed. Painting the town pink is way more about business than breast cancer. That’s very sad and definitely not “hip.”
Peggy,
Every time I wonder how many times we must repeat the mantra “pink doesn’t save lives,” I get another flier in the mail or see another pink advertisement trying to spread more feel-good misinformation while cashing in on people’s good intentions. How many times must we repeat ourselves? Until we’re blue in the face apparently. The pink tide just rolls on while incidence rates continue to rise and too many would-be “survivors” continue to die. Smart and feisty women like Rachel Cheetham Moro. And now, her grieving husband is mocked by the very pinkness that claims to be doing so much good. It’s time to move beyond pink; move beyond “awareness;” and, get REAL about breast cancer. Sing it, sister! — Gayle Sulik
Thank you! I am very “aware” of breast cancer as it just happened to cause my grandmother’s death last fall… detection, treatment, remission, repeat – in the end, pink platitudes just make me sad.
This is very much appreciated, especially for those of us who feel exploited by that ribbon. As a five year “survivor” I feel doubly shamed when I see this kind of nonsense. I only knew Rachel via our blogging and through twitter. Her voice shall remain strong and powerful because those of us whose lives she touched so deeply will continue to make noise. I was lucky. For now. Rachel was lucky for a while, too. And then, not so much. And now there is a grieving husband, a distraught mom, saddened family and friends who miss her dearly. What’s pretty and pink about that?
Just as an aside…… I read your piece about “gender marketing” and WAS in the midst of making a comparison between gender/cause mktg… since they both are wrapped in pink. Maybe I’ll get going on that….. Or more likely, I’ll forget yet again. After all… I got The Good Cancer. The Curable Cancer. We need to change the message and I thank you for shining a light on what I am now officially referring to as Pinkpocrisy.
Thank you, Peggy, for this great posting. The pink-washing hoopla that goes on is insulting, and society tries to minimize our suffering. Like Anne Marie says, I , too, got The Good Cancer.
What’s so good about breast cancer? It’s not fun, sexy, pink, glam. It means death, and for those lucky enough to survive (whatever survive means), there are physical and emotional scars — and lots of side effects from treatment.
Wearing pink won’t cure cancer. However, bringing awareness to an issue SHOULD (ideally) lead to contributions for research to find a cure/prevention. I’m sure breast cancer research is one of the most funded medical research topics. Just because nothing has been found yet is no reason to give up.
Let’s look at cystic fibrosis. The gene has been located but with more awareness could research find a way to alter that gene? Increased awareness would minimally lead to an increased number of people registering as organ donors. Similarly, many people are unaware that they can be living donors for people who need kidney or liver transplants.
Awareness is a start. The problem is that too many people do not take the next step.
SJ, I don’t think anyone is “giving up.” The issue is that the “awareness” campaigns are spreading misinformation, are raising money in ways that are irrelevant at best and irresponsible at worst and have not changed the number of women who are actually dying of the disease. We DO need awareness: awareness that funneling all that money to “education” and mammography will not help the quest for a cure or a cause of breast cancer; awareness that mammography neither cures nor prevents the disease; awareness that there is not enough work being done on metastatic disease (the one that kills). People need to be aware of WHERE their money goes and what it does. Otherwise what does “awareness” even mean? Is the goal to cure/prevent breast cancer or to feel good about ourselves and sell more products whether or not we’re actually doing anything to further the cause? To my mind it’s a moral imperative to make breast cancer advocacy meaningful again or we are doing a disservice to actual women with cancer.
I highly recommend Gayle Sulik‘e book “Pink Ribbon Blues.” It’s a wonderful analysis of the limits–and potential–of pink ribbon culture.
I don’t think there is anyone left on earth who hasn’t been touched by breast cancer. “Raising awareness” is no longer necessary. Few of us have enough money to make a dent, let alone to waste; I want my donations to go toward research and treatment financial support. PTTP doesn’t make me feel good, it makes me cynical. We risk “awareness” overexposure and pinkpocracy actually turning people off. I, myself, feel my eyes glazing over.
Wow! How depressing I thought I was helping but according to these posts my passion and hard work to raise awareness about early detection are for naught…..
Kim, I so appreciate and respect your passion and your hard work. It means a lot to me as someone who has been touched by breast cancer. I hope this doesn’t make you throw up your hands, but rather making sure that your good will is used for its intended purpose, and not to help promote or put a good face on business. I’d urge you to read Gayle Sulik’s book and blog Pink Ribbon Blues She offers some answers to the question of: if not THIS then WHAT????