Author: Anastasia Spiridonova

Couple years ago a salesman in Staples convinced me to donate money for breast cancer research by buying a pen that cost only a dollar. He sold me a vulgar bright pink pen to support breast cancer. The pen turned out to be a fine writing instrument. However, every time writing with the pen, I had a nasty feeling of being tricked and robbed. How could a pen that usually sold in a pack of five pens for about seven to ten dollars be sold for a dollar? Math says such pen is usually cost about two dollars. And I got such a pen for a dollar and presumably donated a dollar for a breast cancer research. Numbers did not add up. After the incident with the pen I started noticing pink ribbons on products all around me and avoided buying them. I simply did not like pink color used in context of a disease and did not like feeling tricked and robbed.

Why pink? Pink by definition does not mean a woman or feminine. Pink is just a color that reflects all light wavelengths except wavelengths that correspond to pink color. But somehow from a definition from a physics textbook pink color turned into a social custom to define women. So breast cancer was labeled as women’s disease by a pink ribbon, ignoring the fact that men also can have (not as often) breast cancer. However, breast cancer awareness makes men invisible in the eyes of the society as victims of breast cancer. And not only pink ribbon ignores men who can have breast cancer, pink ribbon also lefts out men who support, love, and fight by the side of women and men who have breast cancer. Moreover, pink color alienates healthy men from taking breast cancer seriously because American culture makes an emphasis on that “real” men do not wear pink color.
So what are we left with? We are left with the fact that cancer survivors, for the sake of healthy people, need to rise up in order to teach the society about breast cancer, need to rise up against companies that have carcinogens in their products and still label their products with pink ribbons as safe products. After reading “Breast Cancer: Power Vs. Prosthesis” by Audre Lorder, the desire to fight against women’s image, set by the society where breasts define you as a woman, overwhelms you. But more horrific is that we need a call from a cancer survivor to think about life adjustments of people who have cancer. We are part of a world where people who have cancer need to fight for their rights instead of being helped and cared for. Healthy people are tricked into believing that everything they need to know about breast cancer is that they need to buy a product with a pink ribbon and that only women can have breast cancer.

From Leisha Davison-Yasol article “Please Put That Pink Can of Soup Down and Put Your Bra Back On” and Lochlann conclusion of examination BMW’s breast cancer awareness day, pink ribbons products would not help women with breast cancer and only result in profit increase for companies. What can we expect from the society that is fine that their government has banned only couple chemicals from beauty products while Europe banned hundreds of chemicals? How can we expect government and society to care about sex therapies for cancer patients discussed in “Let’s talk about sex … and cancer” by Jacque Wilson when sex is a banned topic in the American society while the whole culture is sexualized? When United States has the highest teen pregnancy among developed countries, when some states are not requite to teach students about reproduction or when states decide to teach sex education, it does not need to be scientifically correct, sexual life of people who are already invisible in the eyes of society is not existent.

Ignoring horrors, pain, death, men having breast cancer, men supporting and loving women with breast cancer, a bright pink ribbon defines breast cancer as only women’s problem that can be solved by buying a pen.

A notion of a “healthy body” means different things to different people. From one point of view, a society defines a “healthy body” based on cultural norms that can take into account distorted scientific knowledge and gender prejudice. What is the norm of how person has to look can be found in popular culture, popular magazines, movies, and billboards. On the other hand, for example, a “healthy body” means a different thing to athletes (I consider athletes’ point of view because that is how I am used to see the world).

The term “healthy” gets its definition according to the time you live in. In different times scientists define what means to be healthy in different ways. Moreover, culture distorts definition given by scientists. For example, Margaret Lowe’s paper “From Robust Appetites to Calorie Counting” shows how definition of “healthy” was used to define women. Before 1920s, for women to have extra weight meant to be feminine and healthy. The American society defined what meant for women to be healthy based on scientific knowledge they had (I have to mention that often science can be interpreted the way someone wants or to be incomplete). Then in 1920s or a little early an idea of a “healthy body” changed. According to Margaret Lowe’s analysis, popular flopper image and a “healthy body” meant the same thing. Moreover, having slim/perfect/healthy/flopper body meant that a woman was capable to control her needs, had wealth and was popular, could good men and a job. So a “healthy body” did not mean that a woman was eating healthy food, was physically hardy and strong. A “healthy body” was a reflection of woman’s character and social status and, unfortunately still is.

Today’s obsession with perfect/ “healthy” body is everywhere (I use terms perfect and “healthy” interchangeable because in cultural norms there is no difference between these terms). The perfect body usually means a slim and muscular body. At least that kind of perfect bodies looks at us from billboards, magazines, and other advertisements. Popular magazines with the help of bathroom scales determine how healthy you are. Or you can easily google body mass calculator and within a minute you will now your verdict: normal, overweight, or obese. April Michelle Herndon in her paper “Mommy made me do it” explores how rhetoric in popular magazines, books for parents and mass media blames mother for obese nation. Herdon considers a prevailing belief by some Americans that mothers have to give birth and to raise slim children. And if a mother fails to raise a slim child, she is responsible. While Herndon examines rhetoric in parent books, government agenda of the popular belief that women are responsible for obese nation and that body size determines how good mothers fulfill parenting duties, we can take one more step and think why women get to be blamed.
My guess is that women are easy target. If people consider what factors contribute to obesity, they would get such agencies like government and big corporation. To be short I will just list problems that possibly lead to obesity without detailed discussion.
• Fast food and junk food advertised directly to children (no government regulation about advertisement of products to children. Big companies buy politicians);
• no differentiation between cultural definition of “healthy” and medical definition of “healthy” (people do not read medical journals, they read popular magazines)
• in New York City for example, no space for children to be physically active (not every parent can afford to pay for a child to play some sport);
• no public education about nutrition;
• culture;

As a child of a professional swimmer, I could never force myself to read popular magazines for women or look at actresses and models and think like many people that those women are “healthy” or accept that that is how women has to look like (I cannot call male models and actors “healthy” too). For me “healthy” always meant to be smart about my nutrition and to exercise regularly. Moreover, my mom did a very good job by breaking any cultural stereotypes about cultural norms. So cultural standards of a “healthy body” bombard us from everywhere and not giving up to cultural norms is really hard. Cultural standards of a “healthy body” are different from medical standards. Blaming women for obese nation is a cover up of those people who actually are responsible for obese nation.