I Will Not Be Pinkwashed: Komen’s Race is for Money, Not the Cure

Title: I Will Not Be Pinkwashed: Komen’s Race is for Money, Not the Cure

Author: Dr. Mercola

Publication: Food Consumer

Publication Date:  February 22, 2012

“The multimillion-dollar company behind all those pink “breast cancer awareness” ribbons — the Susan G. Komen Foundation – uses less than a dime of each dollar to actually look for a breast cancer cure, as promised.

Plastering pink ribbons on every conceivable product has much more to do with raising awareness of, and money for, the Komen Foundation than it does curing breast cancer; pink ribbon campaigns are commonly used on products that may contribute to cancer, such as fried chicken and cosmetics that contain cancer-causing ingredients

It’s reported that the Komen Foundation owns stock in several pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, the maker of tamoxifen, a cancer drug that is actually classified as a human carcinogen by both the World Health Organization and the American Cancer Society.

In the case of many large cancer charities, your money will go toward research to create often-toxic and sometimes deadly cancer drugs, questionable screening programs like mammography, and into the bank accounts of its numerous well-paid executives — all while the real underlying causes continue to be ignored or actively concealed.”

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The powerful problem of pink

Title: The powerful problem of pink; Victoria’s branding secret may be colour-based, but when it backfires, it isn’t pretty. Just ask Lego

Authors: Francine Kopun

Publication: The Toronto Star

Publication Date: February 14, 2012

…KFC had a larger public relations problem on its hands in 2010, when it teamed up with Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the organization behind the pink ribbon campaign for breast cancer awareness.

During the campaign, KFC changed the colour of its iconic bucket from red to pink, temporarily lit its headquarters pink, and repainted a Louisville restaurant. The Colonel Sanders look-alike who represents the company traded in his white suit for a pink version to complete the brand’s temporary transformation.

The result was the single largest donation in the history of Susan G. Komen for the Cure – $4.2-million raised by 5,000 restaurants in the United States. The funds were used for local breast cancer education, screening and treatment, but the campaign provoked ridicule and lingering criticism.

“Raising money in the name of breast cancer research, while engaged in a partnership with a corporation that may very well be contributing to this disease, is pink-washing in its most egregious form,” according to Think Before You Pink, an organization launched in 2002 due to concerns about the growing number of pink ribbon products on the market.

It accused KFC of targeting low-income communities with a product containing carcinogens and fats linked to heart disease and breast cancer.

The campaign was not repeated…

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Detailing the problems of ‘breast cancer culture’

Title: Detailing the problems of ‘breast cancer culture’

Author: Anna Holmes

Publication: The Washington Post

Publication Date: February 09, 2012

…Although the mainstreaming of breast cancer activism and awareness is a triumph of marketing and outreach, its ubiquity has come at a cost – or depending on your point of a view, a profit – in the form of hundreds if not thousands of new or retooled consumer products. Cars, makeup, vacuum cleaners, stuffed animals, NFL and MLB apparel . . . all these and more have, at one point or another over the past few decades, been slapped with a fresh coat of (pink) paint and the imprimatur of any number of breast cancer charities, including Komen and the other behemoth in the breast cancer space, the Avon Foundation…

pink ribbons, pink ribboned-consumer goods and associated runs, walks and jumps “for the cure” have become so commonplace and therefore benign that we hardly notice them; we’re anesthetized to this major killer of women to the point that it’s almost accepted as a rite of passage, not a profoundly painful experience. The color has been promoted as fashionable, a shorthand for a sort of optimism and positivity – what [Samantha] King calls the “tyranny of cheerfulness” – that threatens to obscure much of the justifiable grief, frustration and fear that accompany the epidemic, not to mention the hypocrisies of the companies who benefit from it…

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After Outcry, a Senior Official Resigns at Komen

Title: After Outcry, a Senior Official Resigns at Komen

Author: Jennifer Preston

Publication:  The New York Times

Date: February 07, 2012

Karen Handel, a former Republican candidate for governor in Georgia who joined the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation last year, resigned Tuesday as senior vice president for policy just days after the foundation reversed its decision to largely end its financial support for breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood affiliates amid an uproar…

Although Komen reversed its decision on Friday, criticism of the organization continued over the weekend and included a Twitter campaign started on Super Bowl Sunday called #takebackthepink aimed at pointing people to other ways to support breast cancer research.

Komen’s decision even prompted Ford, a longtime sponsor, to buy advertising on Twitter saying it did not believe that politics should be involved in breast cancer research. And members of MoveOn.org and two other organizations delivered petitions, signed by nearly 850,000 people, on Tuesday afternoon at Komen’s headquarters in Dallas calling on the organization to continue to financially support Planned Parenthood.

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Is Susan G. Komen Denying the BPA-Breast Cancer Link?

Title: Is Susan G. Komen Denying the BPA-Breast Cancer Link?

Author: Amy Silverstein

Publication:  Mother Jones

Publication Date: October 3, 2011

If you’ve ever bought something pink to support breast cancer research, there’s a good chance a portion of the money went to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the largest nonprofit in the world solely dedicated to eradicating the disease. Famous for its fundraising races and pink gear, the foundation has been fighting breast cancer for three decades. So it may come as a surprise that Komen has posted statements on its website that dismiss links between the common chemical bisphenol A (BPA) and breast cancer, even while funding research that explores that possible connection.

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Komen’s pink ribbons raise green, and questions

Title: Komen’s pink ribbons raise green, and questions

Author: Liz Szabo

Publication: USA Today

Publication Date: July 18, 2011

Supporters of Susan G. Komen for the Cure are used to seeing the group’s founder, Nancy Brinker, at fundraisers such as Race for the Cure.

But some breast cancer survivors said they were surprised to see Brinker recently on the Home Shopping Network selling perfume. The new fragrance, called Promise Me, comes in a rose-colored bottle with Komen’s trademarked pink ribbon, and its manufacturer has pledged to donate at least $1 million to the charity. The perfume is the latest in a long line of products bearing Komen’s pink ribbon, from kitchen mixers to gardening gloves, that have helped the group raise $1.9 billion for breast cancer causes.

And though some of Komen’s marketing partners have become the butt of jokes (KFC’s pink “Buckets for the Cure” was even satirized on The Colbert Report last year), none of these pink-ribboned products has angered as many breast cancer survivors as the new fragrance.

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Hold Your Noses: Pink Has A Smell

Title: Hold Your Noses: Pink Has A Smell

Author: Gayle Sulik

Publication: Pink Ribbon Blues blog

Publication Date: June 17, 2011

Susan G. Komen for the Cure®’s new fragrance Promise Me has more than a few people up in arms about the lengths this nonprofit organization (or perhaps more appropriately termed, nonprofit corporation), will go to guarantee its position in the breast cancer marketplace. The organization technically is in the business of ending breast cancer not hawking pink ribbon product lines. If it worked as it should, achieving its mission would render the organization and its increasing number of branded products obsolete.

This irony is not lost on a growing number of individuals and organizations taking aim at what they believe to be seriously misdirected activities. Komen’s corporate partnership last October with consumer products investor and operator, TPR Holdings, only invigorated discontent. TPR’s targeted investments include “scalable mass and prestige opportunities in health, beauty and  wellness categories.” Together, Komen and TPR envisioned “a union of beauty and charity” that took the form of a scalable, mass-produced, prestige item specifically designed for Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, a fragrance called Promise Me. The perfume was released in April, given as a complimentary sample to prospective beauty bloggers and reviewers, and is slated to remain on the market for six months “with new editions launching each year.”

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Pastel Injustice: The Corporate Use of Pinkwashing for Profit

Title: Pastel Injustice: The Corporate Use of Pinkwashing for Profit

Authors: Amy Lubitow and Mia Davis

Publication: Environmental Justice

Publication Date: June 17, 2011

This article discusses the importance of recognizing pinkwashing, the practice of using the color pink and pink ribbons to indicate a company has joined the search for a breast cancer cure and to invoke breast cancer solidarity, even when the company may be using chemicals linked to cancer. This article argues that pinkwashing is a form of social injustice directed at women in the United States because the practice a) provides a vehicle for corporations to control the public experience of breast cancer, while simultaneously increasing profits and potentially contributing to the rising rate of the disease; b) obscures an environmental health discourse that recognizes the environmental causes of breast cancer; and c) co-opts or redirects women’s experiences of the disease by narrowly defining what is possible.

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Komen’s Wild Ride

Title: Komen’s Wild Ride

Author: Alicia C. Staley

Publication: wegoHealth blog

Publication Date: June 10, 2011

Dear Susan G. Komen for the Cure:

Stop. Just stop. I’ve reached the point where I’m embarrassed by you and all your branding efforts for the cure. I see tons of pink ribbons, plastered on everything from shampoo to lawn mowers and cat litter.  I’m beyond aware.  I’m frustrated.  I can no longer justify your breast cancer awareness campaigns to my friends that want to know why there’s no cure.  I’ve received more emails in the past week over at Awesome Cancer Survivor expressing exasperation at the breast cancer community than I care to count.  As a breast cancer survivor, I shouldn’t have to justify your behaviors.

When you launched your partnership with Kentucky Fried Chicken  (aka “Buckets for the Cure”), I excused your lapse of judgment.  I assumed it was a temporary slip, and you’d eventually focus your energies back on partnerships and alliances that aligned more closely with your stated goal of “For the Cure.”  You trumpeted the partnership, declaring KFC would make the largest one time donation of an estimated $8 million to Komen. The ultimate goal of the $8 million donation never materialized.  According to your own reports, you only took in $4.2 million.  Not pocket change by any stretch of the imagination, but only about half of what you were looking to grab. You are the self-proclaimed leader of the breast cancer community.  Where is your leadership?

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Cause Bandits: How Would Your Nonprofit Respond?

Title: Cause Bandits: How Would Your Nonprofit Respond?

Author: Jen Price

Publication: Advancing Impact

Publication Date: June 7, 2011

There has been much controversy surrounding Susan G. Komen for the Cure recently. So much so, that the criticism has founded an organized movement.

People are joining together over “mounting concerns about Komen’s organizational leadership, trademark feuds, corporate partnerships and branding activities, pinkwashing, limited successes, and unbalanced program allocations. A critical mass of concerned citizens, many of whom had supported Komen over the years, are now asking whether the ends justify the means.”

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