Download Pink Ribbon Blues: How Breast Cancer Culture Undermines Women's Health PDF

Rating: (16 reviews) Author: Gayle A. Sulik ISBN : 9780199933990 New from $16.22 Format: PDF

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Medical sociologist Gayle A. Sulik reveals the hidden costs of the pink ribbon as an industry, one in which breast cancer functions as a brand name with a pink ribbon logo. Based on historical and ethnographic research, analysis of awareness campaigns and advertisements, and hundreds of interviews, Pink Ribbon Blues shows that while millions walk, run, and purchase products for a cure, cancer rates continue to rise, industry thrives, and breast cancer is stigmatized anew for those who reject the pink ribbon model. Even as Sulik points out the flaws of "pink ribbon culture," she outlines the positives and offers alternatives. The paperback includes a new Introduction investigating Susan G. Komen for the Cure and a color insert with images of, and reactions to, the pinking of breast cancer.

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• Product Details
• Table of Contents
• Reviews

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Reprint edition (October 1, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199933995
• ISBN-13: 978-0199933990
• Product Dimensions: 1 x 5.3 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Download Pink Ribbon Blues: How Breast Cancer Culture Undermines Women's Health PDF

We are indeed surrounded by the pink do-gooders. I even saw a pink backhoe on display.
Now, our brave author seeks to separate well-grounded hope from misleading hope. And, says Sulik, "The goal to eradicate breast cancer is not being realized." (p. 9.) Further, the advantages to screening have been exaggerated. (p. 20.)
My somewhat paranoid furniture stripper said that no one really wants to cure cancer because then the money would be gone. He is correct about the money being gone. Imagine, if a vaccine were created to prevent cancer or an inexpensive injection to cure cancer were developed, how many folks would be off their feed. There would no longer be a need for expensive research, oncologists, medications, treatments or miscellaneous paraphernalia. "The industry that benefits from increased use of mammography and pharmaceuticals is at the core of what has become pink ribbon culture." (p. 210.)
The author contends that exposure to common chemicals in the environment may contribute to high incidence of breast cancer (p. 60.) while the pink ribbon culture emphasizes the courageous survivor.
Again, many of the largest corporate donors to the pink culture derive huge profits from the treatment end of the business. This includes hardware and pharmaceuticals, and so forth...
Yet, breast cancer rates have risen (dramatically in my opinion) since 1940 (p. 159.) And, there is still no sure cure or prevention method.
Proper treatment and "cure" of the disease are essential.
However, to get back to my outspoken furniture stripper, this is not my priority. I have a wife and two daughters. I do not want them to be survivors. I want them to never contract the disease. I want to know what causes breast cancer. How can it be prevented?

I had great expectations of this book. With its provocative subtitle and the blurb stating that it was based on ten years of research, I thought it was really going to blow the lid off 'pink ribbon culture,' exposing all the things that were wrong with the 'cancer industry' and how it has 'pinkwashed' Americans -- especially American women -- into supporting breast cancer research through the use of pink ribbons. What I found instead was a book that was reasonably informative and interesting, but with a confusing array of concepts that never really coalesced into a coherent framework of analysis.

This book is long on description. I learned quite a bit about the various types of breast cancers and their relative rates of incidence. I also learned about the history of the various treatments developed over the past 30-40 years, and how those treatments have or haven't improved -- the results are mixed and subject to interpretation -- survival chances for women. Finally, I learned about the history of the breast cancer awareness movement and its troubled relationships with corporate funders and manufacturers (i.e., Big Pharma). All of this was presented in roughly the first half of the book.

Meanwhile, I was frustrated by the attempts of the author to analyze 'pink ribbon culture.' I do get that there's something unique about breast cancer that warrants a gender lens, but rather than situating pink ribbon culture into a feminist critique of culture more generally, the author tries to make a case that there's something uniquely insidious about a breast cancer culture that silences women's voices and limits their options.