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

From the Author:

Pink Ribbon Blues is not the first book to offer an understanding and critique of breast cancer advocacy, culture, history, or survivorship in the United States. It is, however, the first book to bring it all together. Pink Ribbon Blues shows how breast cancer culture and industry work as a system and reveals the consequences of that system, both positive and negative. The book:

• Details the history of breast cancer advocacy, showing hard-won successes, splits within the movement, and ties between industry and advocacy.
• Situates breast cancer within the broader cancer culture.
• Shows the crucial role of mass media in promoting particular versions of the cancer story and restricting others.
• Synthesizes scientific controversies within the medical system that impact the decisions of those who are diagnosed, those who face recurrences, and those who are at risk for breast cancer.
• Shares voices that fall within and outside of the pink mainstream as the diagnosed work within the culture and/or resist it.
• Offers a clear argument and a plea to consider the effects of pink culture on public health.

Having lost too many people to this disease, it is my hope that Pink Ribbon Blues will encourage compassionate critique of this system and a roadmap for fixing what is broken.

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

About this edition

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