I don’t understand cwhy the NFL has Brest cancer week. Aren’t there more deadly and more prolific diseases than that? How about just “cancer week”? Or no special week at all? Makes it seem like breast cancer is more important than all the other kinds.
Us men who like football also place a high priority on healthy boobs.
And why not take the $100s of K that it took to make special pink shoes and other gear that will only be used for one game one week across the NFL and donate that to cancer research? What a colossal waste of money.
That gear can be auctioned off. Hopefully the proceeds will go to cancer research.
Perhaps you should read this: http://www.salon.com/life/cancer/index.html?story=/mwt/feature/2010/10/01/breast_cancer_month_overload
It’s a scam, basically. Penn and Teller devoted an episode of Bullshit! to the Breast Cancer Awareness movement, and it was chock full of bullshitty goodness.
Breast cancer is not the leading threat to women’s health, not by a long shot. But it’s the most fun to promote because it’s titillating. Breast cancer is sexualized, and sex sells. So slapping a breast cancer logo on your product helps sell it better than any other disease.
The sexualization of breast cancer isn’t a marketing thing, and it’s unique. I say it’s not a marketing thing because it’s the breasts themselves that sexualize the disease. The marketers are chasing the phenomenon, not creating it. And it’s unique when you consider that there’s nothing hot about ovarian cancer, but with breast cancer…BOOBIES!!!
If women got butt-cheek cancer, it would have just as strong of a marketing lobby. Or if guys got ab cancer.
I heard that the Browns support colorectal cancer.
::d&r::
I’m a woman, and I’m glad that breast cancer is no longer considered an unspeakable, shameful thing, something that most sufferers seemed to feel “defeminized” them. However, you’re right, the marketing machine behind it is really at crazy levels. I don’t buy pink stuff, especially since it’s hard to tell how much profit actually goes to any breast cancer support/research groups; if I want to donate to causes I try to do it directly.
Heart disease is the big killer of women if we’re talking about diseases.
It’s a month, not a week. And a month with five weeks of games at that. The NFL goes in for this breast cancer promotion for the same reason Major League Baseball does the pink bats and gloves on Mother’s Day: they’re trying to attract female viewers, and breast cancer is universally seen as a good cause. Of course it is a good cause, but there are a lot of good causes. Breast cancer is a good cause that is also about as uncontroversial as they come. You’d think prostate cancer or testicular cancer would be a natural fit for the NFL, but it’s not as easy to market because men don’t deal with those cancers the same way women deal with breast cancer.
Well, it’s not official, but every week is Traumatic Brain Injuryweek in the NFL.
The NFL has an image problem with regard to women plus they want more women to watch games on Sunday. Add those together and you get Breast Cancer Awareness in the NFL.
There’s the insanity that permeates the entire week before the Super Bowl.
Even my wife mentioned this past Monday evening that she’s beginning to tire a bit of the incessant, ubiquitous pink. It does seem like it’s far more prevalent this year than any in the past.
I’m pretty sure they only started doing that last season. In 2008 (and maybe before that) they did some breast cancer stuff, but they didn’t turn parts of all the uniforms pink. They may have stepped it up some more this year.
The NFL might not be the ones promoting it, but you can’t watch it on TV without learning a little bit too much about erectile dysfunction.
At least Major League Baseball tries to balance things out by making Father’s Day prostate cancer day.
How do they do that? What color or Prostate Bats?
Light blue. (I’m not sure if they actually use blue bats, but players’ wristbands and what not are blue.)