Pink ribbon blues [electronic resource] : how breast cancer culture undermines women's health / Gayle A. Sulik.

ISBN:

9780199749935

Title:

Author:

Sulik, Gayle A.

Personal Author:

Sulik, Gayle A.

Publication Information:

New York : Oxford University Press, 2011.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxii, 402 pages)

Contents:

1. What is Pink Ribbon culture? -- 2. The development of Pink Ribbon culture. The breast cancer movement -- Medical consumerism -- Aesthetics and normalization -- A cause of epidemic proportions, and the rise of Pink October -- Solidarity, fundraising, and publicity -- Unintended consequences -- 3. Mixed metaphors: war, gender, and the mass circulation of cancer culture. LIVESTRONG and the masculine ethos -- Gilda's Club and the feminine ethos -- Pink femininity -- Pink femininity in breast cancer culture -- The She-ro -- 4. Consuming pink: mass media and the conscientious consumer. The special role of women's magazines -- The breast cancer audience -- Branding and the niche market of the socially aware -- Warriors in pink -- The breast cancer brand -- Fear and the pink menace -- Hope and faith in breast cancer awareness -- Goodness, fundraising, and the pink lifestyle -- Komen's new logo -- 5. Consuming medicine, selling survivorship. The breast cancer industry -- Disease classification -- Medical technology -- The benefits of mammography -- The risks of mammography -- Cost/benefit analysis -- Screening programs and the makers of the machines -- Big Pharma -- Industry ties to advocacy -- 6. Under the pink: optimism, selfishness, and guilt. Ruby's story -- "Becoming" a breast cancer survivor: learning the rules -- Feeling rule I: optimism -- Incorporation of the She-ro -- Rejecting the She-ro -- Feeling rule 2: selfishness -- She-roic selfishness (i.e., rational coping strategy) -- Selfishness as confessional -- Feeling rule 3: guilt -- The inadequate She-ro -- Embodied social stigma -- Family disruption -- 7. The balancing act. Taking care of myself -- The balancing act -- Setting boundaries -- Accepting help -- Asking for help -- Balancing the sisterhood -- Final thoughts -- 8. Shades of pink. The limiting nature of words -- Narrating one's illness -- Realism and transcendent subversion -- The picture outside the frame -- The terrible stories -- 9. Rethinking Pink Ribbon culture. "Not just ribbons" -- "Think before you pink."

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Breast -- Cancer -- Social aspects.

Health in mass media.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2011

Publication Information:

New York : Oxford University Press, 2011.

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
362.19699449 22	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Pink ribbon paraphernalia saturate shopping malls, billboards, magazines, television, and other venues, all in the name of breast cancer awareness. In this compelling and provocative work, Gayle Sulik shows that though this "pink ribbon culture" has brought breast cancer advocacy much attention, it has not had the desired effect of improving women's health. It may, in fact, have done the opposite. Based on eight years of research, analysis of advertisements and breast cancer awareness campaigns, and hundreds of interviews with those affected by the disease, Pink Ribbon Blues highlights the hidden costs of the pink ribbon as an industry, one in which breast cancer has become merely a brand name with a pink logo. Indeed, while survivors and supporters walk, run, and purchase ribbons for a cure, cancer rates rise, the cancer industry thrives, corporations claim responsible citizenship while profiting from the disease, and breast cancer is stigmatized anew for those who reject the pink ribbon model. But Sulik also outlines alternative organizations that make a real difference, highlights what they do differently, and presents a new agenda for the future.

Author Notes

Gayle A. Sulik, PhD is a medical sociologist and was a 2008 Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities for her research on breast cancer culture.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

You may never think pink again about breast cancer after reading Sulik's sobering and lucid critique of what she calls "pink culture"-which has turned a "complex social and medical" issue into "a popular item for public consumption" and has actually "impeded progress in the war on breast cancer." Sulik, a medical sociologist, argues that the truth about breast cancer, so memorably voiced by its victims in the early 1990s, has now been "silenced in a cacophony of pink talk" about triumph and transcendence thanks to advertising, the media, and the medical establishment. And, Sulik says, pink products and symbols only reinforce traditional notions of femininity and sexuality. Equally troubling is the questionable impact of mammography, which, though urged upon women, has scarcely affected death rates-40,000 women (and 450 men) die of breast cancer each year. With breast cancer incidence rates rising, Sulik's call to "take a road less pink" demands to be heard. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

In this eye-opening story about the ubiquitous pink ribbon, medical sociologist Sulik reveals the dark side of the breast cancer awareness movement. She argues that breast cancer has become a brand, complete with its own logo and self-serving corporations. Zeneca, which makes the treatment drug tamoxifen, has, for instance, always put money into the 25-year-old National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Sulik no fan of the October celebration calls it the official platform for pink ribbon culture to advertise treatment, promote early detection, encourage fundraising, and promise eventual eradication. Despite the sea of pink, no cure is in sight and treatment and detection efforts remain flawed. The Institute of Medicine reported that 75 percent of positive mammograms are, upon biopsy, false positives, and that mammograms miss 25 to 40 percent of tumors that actually are cancerous. Americans don't even know how much of the money they spend on pink products goes toward legitimate breast cancer research. In the end, this well-reported book (Sulik interviewed hundreds of sources) will make readers think twice before they shell out extra bucks for a pink mixer.--Springen, Karen Copyright 2010 Booklist

Choice Review

Medical sociologist Sulik (women's studies, Univ. at Albany (SUNY)) takes an uncommonly critical approach to the modern breast cancer movement. Using insights drawn from interviews, autobiographical sources, and published statistics, she describes the rise of a distinct "pink ribbon" culture in the past two decades. This culture, she argues, maintains a strict set of norms governing the behavior, attitudes, and acceptable emotions of those diagnosed with breast cancer, as well as of the larger society. Supported and marketed by the medical and pharmaceutical industries and powerful foundations such as Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the pink ribbon culture has focused attention and resources toward breast cancer awareness, early detection, and treatment modalities while downplaying a search for the causes of breast cancer, particularly environmental and social causes. Sulik's work is valuable insofar as it raises issues not often heard. Many of her insights are striking and she pulls together a wealth of historical material and data. The book suffers from repetition, tangential rambling, and occasional polemic, flawing an otherwise valuable sociological analysis, but it is worth reading nonetheless. Summing Up: Recommended. University and larger public libraries, all levels. E. L. Maher emerita, Indiana University South Bend

Library Journal Review

Now in paperback, a sociology professor's view of the advocacy movement: more about exploitation than empowerment. (LJ 9/1/10) (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.