Gleeful Discontent

literarypiano:

I should come clean and admit that I am a direct beneficiary of breast cancer research. I am taking part in a clinical trial that is finding the most effective forms of ancillary hormone therapy for selected forms of breast cancer. It’s run by an international research team.

I expect some of the funding comes from pink sales and donations — or, more indirectly, from the generally high profile of breast cancer that makes it an attractive disease for funding bodies such as the National Health and Medical Research Council.

But this doesn’t mean I can’t be critical of the construction of femininity that characterises pink consumerism. It is not just in the colour — the pink of the Barbie aisle in a toy shop — that breast cancer promotions often infantilise women. It is the distinctive coding of the feminine as principally concerned with jewellery, clothes and cosmetics. What is on sale is the generalised clutter of the bedroom, often in the form of teddy bears and fluffy toys. It is a far cry from the womanly strength of the feminist purple of the 1970s. As Barbara Ehrenreich commented in a famous essay: “Certainly men diagnosed with prostate cancer do not receive gifts of Matchbox cars.”

Most insidious, though, is the concept of “shopping for the cure”, and the way it naturalises the idea of women as gleeful consumers of fashion and luxury items.

An article in Crikey today about the potential hypocrisy (and ulterior motives) of brands such as Mount Franklin that push “products that pinkefy themselves with all sorts of glowing promises about their commitment to breast cancer research” reminded of the above interesting article from 2007, by University of Melbourne lecturer Stephanie Trigg. Trigg explores how the “pink” marketing strategy for raising awareness and funds for breast cancer is entangled with consumerism, and ponders whether this actually empowers women — or whether it sidesteps women’s experiences of breast cancer by reinforcing feminine stereotypes.