All right, all right, it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I GET IT.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I say this as someone who lost a grandmother to the disease.

ENOUGH with the PINK already. Especially in the NFL. Pink shoes, pink baseball hats, pink THIS pink THAT. One week, fine. But must I have my eyes assaulted with that horrible color the entire month? It really, really looks ridiculous to see a big burly NFL football player wearing pink sweatbands. Or a NASCAR vehicle painted bright pink. There’s even a high school football team that bought all pink football uniforms. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

Look, it’s very nice that the NFL is doing this, and but what about other diseases? How about we all dress in brown for Colon Cancer Month? I lost a father and a brother to leukemia, how about I wear white all the time (as in “white blood cell” GET IT?). Why not a Leukemia Awareness Month?

And no, I don’t need the tasteless “Men you know you like a womans tits” commercials I’ve seen out there. Or demolition derby cars painted pink saying “Save the Ta-Tas”. Just because its done in a good cause is no excuse for inappropriateness.

And just exactly what does all this wearing pink accomplish? Does it really raise that much money? It cant be to remind women to get exams----since most of the NASCAR and NFL audience is male. Why do I suspect this is some sort of effort at political correctness? “We may be big macho football players and good 'ol boy race car drivers, but we aint afraid to do something girly to show we care about the wimmens!”

Bullshit.

Maybe it’s because if you dare say anything like this., it means you are a misogynist or something, but according to the CDC, heart disease is the number one killer of women. Why not a Heart Disease in Women Awareness Month? Stroke and respiratory illnesses kill more women or about as many women as breast cancer on an annual basis. Why arent NFL players swearing special shoes and sweatbands for a Stroke Awareness Month?

Also breast cancer accounts for less than 10% of all cancer deaths in women. What about the other cancers? Lung cancer? Stomach cancer? Ovarian cancer?

Look, I’m not saying that Breast Cancer Awareness Month is a BAD thing. And I understand certain diseases have stronger advocacy groups than others because of the people behind the movement, regardless of actual fatalities.

But isn’t making people wear pink for an entire month . . . when you know they are going to be too nice to say no . . .a BIT much?

2

You saved me a thread. But, I think the NFL thinks this is its year to build a female audience. The breast cancer thing is OTT. But so was the Black Eyed Peas MNF launch party. Do they really think Tha Ladiez will start watching if they do this? They are certainly pandering hard enough.

I give for breast cancer, of course. I also give for prostate cancer, which affects 85% of the NFL’s core audience. Is it not weird that I’ve never seen a promotional for that one???

3

I was driving by my local High School the other day and saw a pink bus out there. It was the same medical bus they use at my work once a year to give the ladies free breast cancer exams if they want one.

It makes sense to give them at my work; but High School? Do teenage girls have a problem with this? I mean, I know it’s possible for teenage girls to get BC but is it such an epidemic that they need to screen HS girls?

4

Yeah, I don’t get it, quite frankly. Does breast cancer kill way more than other cancers? It seems that it being a sex-specific cancer that can only affect half the population would dictate it’s a relatively lower threat than other sorts of cancer, but I don’t know much about cancer and maybe it has abnormally high rates.

Is there some sort of feminism thing going on here? What’s the deal?

5

I think it mostly has to do with the fact that breast cancer isn’t a death sentence. So the point of raising awareness of it and how to screen for it is so that no woman that has it discovers it before it’s too late.

Unlike say, lung cancer where if you get it, you’re fucking dead more often than not.

6

Saved me a GQ thread as well. I lost a grandmother to breast cancer a long time ago, before I was even born, so I do understand that it kills and it is important for women to be screened. But why do we focus on just this one cancer, to paraphrase the OP? A commercial on the radio in my town is even encouraging women to drop off their used bras at a local furniture store so that they can become part of an event called “Bras Down Broadway.” The plan is to string a bunch of used bras as far as they will go down this one street in my town near the university. What does this accomplish?

7

Actually, men can and do get breast cancer as well. That is my peeviest peeve about the whole “breast cancer awareness” thing, though I note that these days you do, occasionally, see something about male breast cancer in the news. So no, breast cancer does not “only affect half the population”, though it is certainly a lot more common in one half the population than the other. Because of the assumption that only women get it - reinforced by the relentless pink - men who do get it are usually diagnosed later and have poorer survival rates.

Sure, breast cancer awareness is a worthy thing, but I think sometimes it’s gotten to the point that it overshadows other cancers, and other risks such as heart disease. I also think it leads some women to think their tits are ticking time bombs. And I personally loathe pink as a color.

8

Thanks for the reminder.

9

I’ve wondered this myself. I see the things that are anomalously pink, I think,Breast cancer, okay, I’m “aware” of it—so now what?

10

Heart disease is in February and if you don’t wear a red dress you’re ostracized in the lunch room.

11

I wish to have the everything has to be pink initiative destroyed.

12

Now you go get screened. Prevention is the cure and all that.

13

I also find Breast Cancer Awareness month frustrating. I’ve had family and friends diagnosed with breast cancer, but at the same time, I’ve had far more diagnosed with heart disease, high cholesterol and/or high blood pressure. I think that the focus on breast cancer wrongly makes some women think that it’s the #1 killer and puts heart disease in the shade as a man’s disease. If you ask a sampling of women what the primary killer is, you’ll often have women respond that it’s breast cancer when it’s not. What’s worse is that, in women, heart disease can manifest itself differently than it does in men.

All the freakin’ pink doesn’t help, either. Plus, have you ever tried to run in one of the Race for the Cure races? It’s impossible!

14

Just as a cross reference, there’s a thread about this in MPSIMS, and in January there was a sorta-related Great Debates thread called “Politically Correct Cancer.”

That’s a lot of it, I think. And women are probably more likely to see the disease as a common cause rather than a sickness you deal with in private. That has to help.

And maybe if more resources were being devoted to lung cancer it wouldn’t be such a death sentence. Your summary is probably accurate, but as far as logic goes, it sucks. If we’re devoting all our resources to the most treatable cancers and paying less attention to the most deadly ones, people are going to die unnecessarily.

From the standpoint of the NFL, baseball, NASCAR and whoever else is on the bandwagon, it’s doing something for a good, non-controversial cause while reaching out to women who could become fans. Makes sense for them. For me personally, these campaigns are really annoying and I’ll be gritting my teeth through the next week or two of football, because breast cancer is up there with world peace as a feel good cause everyone can support, and it feels like the rest of us are fighting for table scraps. Pink ribbons are cute, breasts are great, but that’s just marketing.

And I think studies have shown that regular mammograms don’t do much good overall. So I guess they’re raising awareness and money, but why raise awareness for that?

15

My mother, sister and aunt have had breast cancer. And I still hate the pink movement. The place I go for mammograms has a whole for devoted to mammography, “buy pink” products and prosthetics. “Women’s Health” they call it. I don’t see them devote a whole floor to prostate health, painted baby blue with stylized penises. Maybe a fiberglass colon you can slide down on your way to your colonoscopy.

Cancer runs rampant in my family. My father was a non-smoker who died of lung cancer. My mother had breast and uterine cancer. She was one of 11 children, and between them 6 have had cancer. 2 breast, 2 colon, kidney, brain tumor, uterine cancer. My sister had breast and thyroid cancer be the time she was 50. My grandmother died of pancreatic cancer. Let’s fight cancer, not breast cancer.

As a side note, my father was one of 7 kids. All were diabetics. Let’s fight that while we’re at it.

StG

16

Our grocery store employees now wear pink shirts instead of the navy blue ones as usual.
One of them last month was wearing a turquoise pin. I asked, it was for cervical cancer.

17

Yes - I think the worst possible solution to this problem is a massive profusion of other colors/ribbons/slogans/yadda/yadda/yadda.

18

Prostate cancer is the comparable sex-specific one, and no there is no comparable “awareness initiative.”

19

In fact, it used to be quite common for breast cancer activists to assert that if men got something like breast cancer, it would have the most funding and everyone would know about it. I’ve been glad to see that idea fade away.

20

Pink. Why pink??? Because it’s all girly?

The pink thing brings out my latent angry feminist side. Why not some non-pastel non-associated-with-little-girls color for this? Almost anything else would be fine. But pink. Everything little-girl associated these days seems to come in pink. Little girls do not get breast cancer. Women do.

I know why people wear the ribbons and stuff, it’s so they feel like they’ve done something even if they haven’t, and anyway, who is going to be for cancer of any form? That’s a separate thread. The pink association itself annoys me.