A new film Pink Ribbons, Inc. (trailer above) takes this a bit further in a polemic broadside against the Komen foundation’s relentless marketing machine:
As Barbara Brenner of the activist group Breast Cancer Action puts it, breast cancer is the “the poster child of cause marketing” because of its links to motherhood and women’s sexuality. […] As well, the pep-rally mentality of the movement obscures women’s fear and suffering. The case is made forcefully in interviews with a half-dozen women in a support group who are facing death from the disease: “The message,” one woman says, “is that if you just try really hard, you can beat it,” while those who died “weren’t trying very hard.”
As a lymphoma (both Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s) survivor, I could not agree more. I am sick (sorry, no pun intended) and tired of all the “it’s your willpower” rhetoric.
