Pink Ribbon Blues: How Breast Cancer Culture Undermines Women's Health - Hardcover

Sulik, Gayle A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199740453 ISBN 13: 9780199740451

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2010

Synopsis

Pink ribbon paraphernalia saturate shopping malls, billboards, magazines, television, and other venues, all in the name of breast cancer awareness. In this compelling and provocative work, Gayle Sulik shows that though this "pink ribbon culture" has brought breast cancer advocacy much attention, it has not had the desired effect of improving women's health. It may, in fact, have done the opposite. Based on eight years of research, analysis of advertisements and breast cancer awareness campaigns, and hundreds of interviews with those affected by the disease, Pink Ribbon Blues highlights the hidden costs of the pink ribbon as an industry, one in which breast cancer has become merely a brand name with a pink logo. Indeed, while survivors and supporters walk, run, and purchase ribbons for a cure, cancer rates rise, the cancer industry thrives, corporations claim responsible citizenship while profiting from the disease, and breast cancer is stigmatized anew for those who reject the pink ribbon model. But Sulik also outlines alternative organizations that make a real difference, highlights what they do differently, and presents a new agenda for the future.

About this title

About the Author

Gayle A. Sulik, PhD is a medical sociologist and was a 2008 Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities for her research on breast cancer culture.

From the Inside Flap

Features

• The first book to provide a comprehensive ethnographic analysis of breast cancer culture in American society
• Presents a thought-provoking and probing argument against the industry of awareness-raising
• Full of stories from breast cancer survivors and caregivers who have struggled with the pink ribbon ideal
• Describes real ways to make a difference for breast cancer patients and their families

Reviews

In this eye-opening story about the ubiquitous pink ribbon, medical sociologist Sulik reveals the dark side of the “breast cancer awareness” movement. She argues that breast cancer has become a “brand,” complete with its own logo and self-serving corporations. Zeneca, which makes the treatment drug tamoxifen, has, for instance, always put money into the 25-year-old National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Sulik—no fan of the October celebration—calls it “the official platform for pink ribbon culture to advertise treatment, promote early detection, encourage fundraising, and promise eventual eradication.” Despite the sea of pink, no cure is in sight and treatment and detection efforts remain flawed. The Institute of Medicine reported that 75 percent of positive mammograms are, upon biopsy, false positives, and that mammograms miss 25 to 40 percent of tumors that actually are cancerous. Americans don’t even know how much of the money they spend on pink products goes toward legitimate breast cancer research. In the end, this well-reported book (Sulik interviewed hundreds of sources) will make readers think twice before they shell out extra bucks for a pink mixer. --Karen Springen

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199740453
• ISBN 13: 9780199740451
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 424