AliprandoJoannaGoFixIt

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 * Abolish Corporate Participation--- The Pink Ribbon Movement**
 * [[image:GoFixIt.jpg width="576" height="432"]]

[|Picture Site]** [|Picture Site2] [|PictureSite3]// [|Picture Site4] //The Pink Ribbon campaign is criticized for utilizing diagnostic (attributing no blame) and prognostic (awareness as the cure) framing. By refusing to point fingers as to why breast cancer rates have been increasing every year and by simply offering awareness and early detection as solution to this epidemic, the Pink Ribbon Movement has been extremely successful in gaining corporate sponsorship and general public acceptance.// [|Movement Research Paper]

[|Think Before You Pink Flyer] // ** The Pink Ribbon and Cause Marketing

Cause Marketing generally refers to a for-profit business partnering with a non-profit business for a mutual cause of some social benefit. Ideally, the process utilizes the for-profit's capital capabilities and lucrative awareness channels to fund raise on national or even global levels. Providing an opportunity for the non-profit likely impossible without the aid of a nationally recognized, for-profit institution. Yet we do not live in an ideal world and for-profits have begun to do what they do best and capitalize on these so called "socially responsible corporate initiatives." **

** Specific to the breast cancer movement we see a corporate trend of "pink-washing" where corporations brand products potentially hazardous ** //and cancer- causing to appear to be “woman-friendly" objects promoting a cure. Pink-washing boosts sales for corporations both in the short term, by promising the consumer a percentage of the proceeds will be donated as well as in the long run through improving corporate image by appearing to be a socially active and concerned organization. A member of the Think Before You Pink Campaign comments breast cancer has been "t outed in the media as a “corporate sweetheart” and an “ideal cause,” the pink ribbon campaign has found its niche within cause marketing, and thus far seems to be holding on to it."  //[|Movement Research Paper] Major corporate players in the pink movement include Avon, Estee Lauder, Mary Kay, and Revlon. Appropriately, woman based organizations yet all these companies sell products containing parabens and phthalates, both likely causes of cancer as well as possibly linked to breast cancer due to their estrogen-mimicking properties. How important is it to these organizations to raise funds for breast cancer while the increasing sales of their products may explain the increasing cases of breast cancer.
 * Empty Awareness **//

Most of the issues surrounding the validity of the pink ribbon movement concern the grey area of corporate funding allocation. What exactly does the corporation do with the raised money? How much and where does all the money go? The pink breast cancer movement is so large and so heavily capitalized it is nearly impossible to tell where all the money goes. Yet it is known that most of the money goes towards cure searching research projects rather than those that research causes or why so many more women are diagnosed each year. [|Movement Research Paper]
 * Where does the $$ go? **

Taking a step back it makes complete sense why the raised money is never sent to a preventative research facility since the results, if ever implemented and regulated, would put these same fundraising companies out of business. The hypocrisy of the system ensures that pink ribbon cause marketing is just another marketing campaign and an additional source of revenue rather than "corporate concern."

Due to its reliance on corporate cooperation, the pink movement cannot and will not venture into the more controversial (and likely most critical) topics surrounding breast cancer. Environmental causation for breast cancer is the least researched and funded approach since most of our environmental exposures result from corporate interactions. From a feminist perspective, the movement also perpetuates stereotypes and perceptions of mothers and women in society. Of all the ribbon movements, the pink movements is most successful as the "sweetheart" of cancer causes. Corporations are happy to sign on to the breast cancer awareness bandwagon because of it's politically neutral stance and our societal need to protect women. The mere design of the cause, awareness and activism through consumption, relies on the female's need and desire to shop. Make a difference through consuming pink vacuums, toaster oven, kitchen aids, pots and pans. Cook and clean often, and consume often - the movement credits women in no way as social actors but rather as cooks, cleaners, and shoppers.
 * Pink Ribbon as Sustaining Breast Cancer...sustaining the way we view it

Avon Walk ** "The Avon Breast Cancer 3-Day is about responsibility, integrity, and a demonstration that the world can work if people work together." - from the Avon 3-Day walk brochure... [|Avon Calling Research] "As of 2002, Avon walkers had raised more than $100 million. But $38 million was used to cover Avon’s marketing and administrative costs, including the event producer’s fee. 1 This means that for each dollar raised, less than 65 cents went anywhere near a breast cancer organization." [| Follow the Money]

After registering for the Avon 3-day walk Carol Peeples, investigated just where all the fundraising she had put so much effort into gaining was actually going. She found Avon hires an outside agency, Pallotta Teamworks to organize and run the event. While Peeples was able to find Pallotta's percentage of money donated (many Avon administrators either won't comment or say all of it is donated!) there is still the question of what types of researching this money goes towards (this data is entirely unavailable). [|Avon Calling Research]

Pallotta released that in 2002 just over 60% of the money raised by participants went to breast cancer charities. As a participant in the walk I would be furious to discover that a corporate entity spends some of the funds raised for the event to pay for it. Yet apparently this release is within The Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance guidelines suggesting that no more than 35% of fundraising should go towards the fund. Yet when Peeples took a closer look at Pallotta's figure she noticed that the 60% going towards charities includes the administrative costs of each separate agency participating in the event. In other words, that 60% is again subsidized to pay salaries and other costs associated with running the event. Additionally, each year Avon spends a little bit more, meaning less for the charities falling from 67.67% in 2000 to 60.34% in 2002. Numbers demonstrating actually how much money ends up in the laboratory or in the hands of breast cancer research alliances is entirely unknown. [|Avon Calling Research]   Whether or not the 60% released by Pallotta is true or not is another story. In 1997 Pallotta was sued by Pennsylvania's attorney general for misleading the public of the actual percentage donated. Turns out for the AIDs walk also organized by Pallotta 60% was reported to go to local charities when in fact less than half actually did - later, reported numbers shows less than 11% of money raised actually went to an AIDs charity!!!!!! [|Avon Calling Research] If Avon were to cover the marketing and administrative costs, actual donations made could increase by over 85%. When the Breast Cancer Action Coalition confronted Avon asking the corporation would use part of its $475 million in profits from 2000 to underwrite some of the walks' expenses. [|Follow the Money] Avon commented that they already incur a lot of expense and that donation percentages are lowerfrom walkers registering for the walk and then not attending. "We paid for people who weren't there," a rep from Avon explained. [|Avon Calling Research]

One walkers comments..."They made me feel used. I went into homes they couldn't and asked people who might not have given, as a favor to me, to give money. And they proceeded to use it not with the same regard I had for it--$30.00 that goes to cancer research or some woman in need. They sucked me in." [|Avon Calling Research]


 * Avon and Parabens**

Just as we saw through looking more deeply into the funding and resource allocation of the 3 day walk, we once again come across another questionable factor in determining Avon's impact on breast cancer: the company's products. Avon is the world's largest direct distributor of make-up targeting women in all nations around the globe to buy, sell, and use their cosmetic products. A 2009 report issued by Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition, Dr. Samuel Epstein expressed concern for Avon's heavy use of parabens, as a preservative in their products. When entering the body, paraben mimics estrogen and has been found to promote the growth of breast cancer cells. It is estimated that women are exposed to as much as 50 milligrams of parabens everyday from cosmetics and personal care products. He expressed additional concern specifically for Avon products which use benzophenone and EDTA, additives that act as "penetration enhancers" for moisturizers. By increasing the amount of product absorbed by the skin that means these enhancers also increase the amount of toxins absorbed. Sr. Epstein also found that 16 of the moisturizers tested containing parabens and benzophenone do not list these substances in the ingredient lists. Women dose themselves with carcinogens everyday without even knowing it. [|Risk Research]

The cosmetic industry is highly unregulated by United States legislation and agencies which allow companies to put entirely what they want into their products. Cosmetic companies are not required to test their products for safety and many don't even write all ingredients on the bottle. [|Cosmetic Alliance]

According to the government agency that regulates cosmetics, the FDA's Office of Cosmetics and Colors, "...a cosmetic manufacturer may use almost any raw material as a cosmetic ingredient and market the product without an approval from FDA" The Cosmetics Ingredient Review panel is the only agency specifically concerned with cosmetic product safety yet they are highly ineffective. All product testing is entirely voluntary and the testing that does occur is dictated by cosmetic manufacturers. Naturally, ingredients under controversy of causing cancer or abnormalities are just simply ignored. <span style="font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,'sans serif'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">[|Cosmetic Alliance]

"A<span style="font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,'sans serif'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">lmost 90% of 10,500 ingredients used in personal care products have not been evaluated for safety by the CIR or anyone else." [|Cosmetic Alliance]

In 67 years of monitoring cosmetic safety, the FDA has reviewed 1,175 ingredients but has banned or restricted just NINE of those. While 450 ingredients are banned for use in cosmetics in the European Union, which through legislation has required all cosmetic companies report and remove all chemicals suspected of cause defects by 2004. [|Cosmetic Alliance] As a result of these regulations, cosmetic companies have altered their products ingredients, yet have no intention for changing US sold products!

From my research I strictly propose abolishment of all corporate run fundraising initiatives. The only true benefit I can identify of corporate involvement for these fundraising events is their marketing power. These corporations have a lot of customers and therefore well established outlets to reach them. Yet if all this money raised by thousands of participants purely for the cause, becomes polluted with for-profit administrative costs I start to question the cost-benefit analysis of the entire system. True, Avon's walk has been able to raise millions for breast cancer causes but the percentage of money actually donated is unknown. It is highly likely that of the money donated much of it is to continue the "individual, lifestyle" causes of breast cancer rather than the highly un-researched environmental causes and treatment methods. For all we know the money Avon reportedly donated may go towards Avon researchers looking for a little safer or more difficult to detect paraben for their own products (rather than just abolishing it entirely). While I did not research this completely, we see and I suspect, the same donation issues from other corporate run events such as the AIDs events, or even Relay for Life run by the American Cancer Association (which is also highly tainted by corporate funding).
 * Go Fix It!

The literal hypocrisy of the entire system just baffles me. The toxicity of the Cosmetic industry is entirely overlooked by our consuming society and regulators. Marketing Avon as a breast cancer fighter, through the pink ribbon campaign contributes to this black box of toxic cosmetics so unknown to many consumers. Corporate participation in the Pink Movement has done little for the actual cause besides framing the way society looks at it. Through advocating breast cancer awareness and early detection as a main cause of prevention, the pink ribbon movement has added to the "blame the individual or blame nobody" mentality. Rather than attacking the real issues suggesting breast cancer cases have increased so drastically through the years as we use more and more toxic products and are surrounded, more and more in toxic environments.

** Smaller alliances of no corporate sponsorship have begun to form and protest the pink ribbon movement directly. For example, a National Breast Cancer Coalition’s project offers intensive four-day science courses for advocates, to enable them to participate on funding review boards where they represent breast cancer patient perspectives. Involving the many women victim of the disease would directly progress the movement since so much of the funding goes towards the same researching questions, finding the same research answers. The Breast Cancer Action group comments that **"** while research is conducted at many, many places, some under the direction of the NCI, no coordination exists among these funding sources and research centers." [|The Puzzle Project] Suggesting breast cancer research as a whole is high uncoordinated or cooperative among the facilities. Individual research centers are funded separately but answer all the same question. This money may be better spent on helping to provide better care for breast cancer victims.

"For all this funding and research, the fact remains that most women diagnosed with breast cancer today face essentially the same treatment options—surgery, radiation and chemotherapy—that were offered when the War on Cancer was first declared nearly thirty years ago." [|The Puzzle Project]

"Both the American Cancer Society, the oldest and still most powerful cancer charity, and the government’s National Cancer Institute spend their money largely on public education (urging people to take screening tests), support services (like driving patients to the hospital), screening procedures, and orthodox biomedical research; neither organization pays much attention to the possible links between cancer and man-made environmental toxins." **[|Shopping for the cure]**

Another more specific intervention i thought of, in my disgrace towards the cosmetic industry, is to vandalize products failing to include all the ingredients used. Similar to those warnings required by law in European countries on [|cigarette cartons], I suggest a similar method for a very similar product. Consumers have a right to know exactly what goes into their anti aging cremes the fact that an act such as this, to include on product packaging exactly what is in the product, is considered vandalism is a sustainability issue worth addressing.

I've reduced my own lotion usage...i'm down to a pack a day.

References
 * Academic Resource**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 32px;">Brenner, Barbara A. "Seeing Our Interests Clearly: Follow the Money II." //Get Informed// 52 (Mar. 1999).//Breast Cancer Action - Get Informed//. Breast Cancer Action Group, 1 Nov. 2007. Web. <http://bcaction.org/index.php?page=newsletter-52b>.
 * <span style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Baralt, Lori. <span style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">** "To Pink or Not to Pink: Ideology and Framing Contestation between Breast Cancer Movements" ** <span style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">**// Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Montreal Convention Center, Montreal, Quebec, Canada //****, **** Aug 10, 2006 ** ** <Not Available>. **** 2009-05-25 **** < **** http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p96909_index.html **** > ** ||

Epstein, Samuel. "Unrecognized Cancer and Hormonal Risks of Avon Product." //OCA Press Center// (9 Oct. 2009). //Organic Consumers Association//. Cancer Prevention Coalition, Oct. 2009. Web. 14 Apr. 2010. <http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_19335.cfm>.

Leopold, Ellen. "Shopping for the Cure." //BCA Source// 63 (Feb. 2001).//Breast Cancer Action - Get Informed//. Breast Cancer Action Group, 1 Nov. 2007. Web. 14 Apr. 2010. <http://bcaction.org/index.php?page=newsletter-63a>.


 * Peeples, Carol. "Avon's Calling." //The Progressive// July 2002. //Lexus Nexus Academic Search//. Web. 14 Apr. 2010

"Massachusetts Breast Cancer CoalitionMassachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition." //Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition//. Web. 14 Apr. 2010. <http://mbcc.org/content.php?id=8

"The Puzzle Project: Factsheet." //The Puzzle Project//. Breast Cancer Action, 2 Nov. 2007. Web. 14 Apr. 2010. <http://bcaction.org/index.php?page=the-puzzle-project-factsheet>