Think Before We Pink
Breast Cancer Awareness Month rolls around every October, and so does the color pink — ribbons, product tie-ins, limited-edition packaging, an entire industry built around a single shade. We first asked this question in 2020, and it still feels worth examining: awareness of what, exactly, and to what end?
The Business of Awareness
Many companies that print a pink ribbon on their packaging cap the amount they'll actually donate — once that goal is met, no more of the purchase price goes to the cause, even as the pink packaging stays on shelves all month. Some brands promoting breast cancer awareness simultaneously sell products containing chemicals linked to the disease. This practice has a name: pinkwashing.
The Numbers Worth Sitting With
This year, an estimated 321,910 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and about 42,140 will die from it, according to the American Cancer Society. Breast cancer remains the second most common cancer among women in the U.S., and the second-leading cause of cancer death in women.
Up to 10 percent of breast cancers are linked to inherited gene mutations like BRCA1 and BRCA2, according to City of Hope. The rest happen to women with no family history of the disease at all. Awareness campaigns rarely make room for that complexity — the fundraising walks, the mammogram reminders, the "fight like a girl" language. Breast cancer is not simple, and neither is what it takes to actually change the outcome for the people living with it.
What Awareness Should Actually Ask For
Barbara Brenner, the longtime executive director of Breast Cancer Action, spent years pushing back on the pink ribbon industry before her death in 2013. "There is a value to awareness, but awareness of what, and to what end?" she asked. "We need changes in the direction the research is going, we need access to care beyond mammograms, we need to know what is causing the disease, and we need a cure."
That is still the question worth asking every October: not whether we care, but whether our attention and our dollars are going toward something that actually moves the needle.
Where We're Putting Ours
This year, that includes our partnership with Living Beauty Cancer Foundation — a nonprofit we've championed for years, helping women through treatment and recovery with real programs, not just ribbons. If you're looking to make a meaningful difference for women living with cancer, join us in backing Living Beauty's programming and mission.
"We have to question our willingness as cancer organizations to get into bed with people whose ultimate goal is profit, not health." — Barbara Brenner, former Executive Director, Breast Cancer Action
