"Save Second Base"
pink food and the commodification of breast cancer awareness
There’s a local cookie company whose primary claim to fame is their adorably decorated cookies with witty, sometimes salty sayings written out in a cute script. The owner will conduct polls on her Instagram stories asking followers to choose between one design or another. This was a poll she ran on Saturday:
I responded to the poll with a private comment that said, “Neither, because reducing breast cancer to just breasts is offensive to those of us who have lost loved ones to the disease. It’s about the whole person, not just the breasts.”
Her response was to block me.
This business isn’t the only one to capitalize on breast cancer awareness month, obviously. There’s Kerbey Lane Cafe here in Austin, which not only sells pink pancakes in October but also, in the past, has sold these t-shirts:
One of the last times I went to Kerbey Lane for breakfast before the pandemic, our waiter was wearing one of these shirts and I had to gulp back a surge of rage every time he came to the table.
And then there’s the “pinkwashing” of everything breast cancer-related, like this “Think Pink” milkshake from a restaurant in Miami:
Setting side the very valid argument that using cookies, pancakes, and candy-studded milkshakes are anathema to the kind of diet that would actually help mitigate folx’ breast cancer risk, pink food, to my mind, is just another way for society to consume women. You don’t see purple pancakes for pancreatic cancer awareness, orange milkshakes for leukemia awareness, or green ice cream to raise money for liver cancer. But every October, we are awash in pink, because pink is for girls and apparently the only people who get breast cancer are cisgendered femme women. It’s easy to come up with some cutesy slogan to raise money for breast cancer charities because it is easy to dehumanize and commodify women, even in 2020. (Just look at how Breonna Taylor was turned into a product after her death.) It’s not as easy to come up with hilariously sexist and dehumanizing snacks and imagery to raise awareness and funds for colon cancer.
Compare the October onslaught of pink to Movember, during which men grow mustaches during the month of November to raise money for men’s health issues, from prostate cancer to suicide. While the iconography is deeply gendered (in that mustaches generally aren’t associated with women), the difference between a mustache and a pair of breasts is that one is ornamental and can be voluntarily removed and the other constitutes a secondary sex characteristic that actually serves a biological purpose.
And mustaches aren’t a risk factor for a systemic disease that affects someone’s entire body.
My mother died of breast cancer in 2004. My friend Stephanie, beloved to many, died of breast cancer a little less than two years ago. When someone, no matter how good intentioned, writes “save second base” or “save the tatas” on a $4 sugar cookie, they send the message that breast cancer begins and ends with the breasts, and that the woman they’re attached to is of secondary concern. This is true even if you’re donating 100% of the sales of those cookies to a really great breast cancer charity.
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