Don’t Think Pink
Ann Althouse is sick of the pink breast cancer obsession. You know what? So am I. It’s all of a piece with the nation of neurasthenic hypochondriacs we’ve turned into. It’s not good enough to know about a disease, each disease has to have a “campaign” the purpose of which is to make us “aware” that somewhere someone has this disease and you could get it too! So wear this ribbon to signal your awareness! Like the problem of people not knowing about diseases is so huge and urgent. And they’ve run out of single-color ribbons, I do believe, and are probably by this time going into patterns.
But the breast cancer “campaign” is special, because it’s considered primarily a disease of women (though men have breasts too and they can get cancer in them—my ex-fiancé was one of them, he had to have some pre-cancerous things removed from his moobs a few years back), and thus a variety of pseudo-feminist canards have been tacked onto the business, which means we get people believing things such as were trumpeted by one of her commenters here:
Yeah! It’s TERRIBLE that a disease that was ignored and shunned for years would receive any recognition!!!
I’ve been hearing this about breast cancer for years now, and I’ve come not to believe it. So I countered with:
Breast cancer was “ignored and shunned”? Since when? Sorry, the whole “breast cancer victims were treated like crap until our new Enlightened era of non-stop talking about it because men hated women” sounds like so much propagandistic crap. I’m pretty sure that breast cancer was always considered a serious problem just like every other cancer, and that no one “shunned” anyone, even back when no one knew what to do about people with cancer except to give them laudanum for the pain. People just didn’t used to make as much fuss about themselves and their ailments as we do today. And since we are all now supposed to be attention whores, the idea of keeping one’s problems to oneself is looked upon with horror.
I mean, I know that back in the bad old days, doctors did dismiss some womens’ complaints of illness with “it’s just hysteria because you’re a woman,” but they didn’t do that because they thought women were useless or deserved to suffer, they did that because they didn’t know any better and they sincerely thought that many illnesses were actually manifestations of mental or emotional problems and that a variety of treatments for such, from stern talkings-to to sedatives, were the proper solution. Also, early detection of cancer was impossible then—by the time most cancers can be detected by non-high-tech methods it’s pretty much too late. In any case, I’d like to know where the idea that breast cancer was ever considered such a demerit to a woman that she was “shunned” came from. People with leprosy were famously shunned, but leprosy isn’t cancer. It’s probably a mishmash of half-digested knowledge about past medical practices combined with high school memories of reading The Yellow Wallpaper.
Update: I forgot to add a note about my current funding campaign! It’s for my Emptywalletitis, which is a side effect of Funemploymentosis, a very serious disease that people are afraid to talk about because they’ll be shunned! It’s time to be Aware! But this disease has a cure—all you have to do is click on the Paypal button on my sidebar! And you don’t even have to wear a ribbon, though if you want to go right ahead. My personal favorite colors are forest green, royal blue, deep violet, and wine red.
Next day update: Kathy weighs in. You know, I had forgotten all about that episode of All In The Family. In fact, I have blocked most of the later seasons of that series out of my mind—you know, when it stopped being a funny show where the “lessons” on racial prejudice and so on didn’t get in the way of the funny stuff about Archie ranting at Meathead and telling Edith to stifle herself and became a Concerned Television Program About Problems In Our Society. All I remember is that one where Archie half-reluctantly joins a white supremacist group and Michael won’t let him hold the baby.
And a friend dragged me to see Footloose in the theater because she was nuts over Kevin Bacon, and all I remember thinking is “why did the town ban dancing? Since the action that precipitated the ban was one of those teenage car crashes, why didn’t they just take away the car keys from everyone under twenty? The kids could have been going on a fishing trip…” If you thought too hard about that movie, it fell apart like a paper bag in the rain. John Lithgow’s preacher dad was much too nice and cultured to come up with stuff like “dancing is of the devil” or whatever it was he said, and he had no control over his daughter, who was sleeping around. And banning dancing would seem to contravene the Third Amendment, especially the “right of the people to peacefully assemble”—because the dancing ban extended to the stock uptight adults the movie was populated by. And so on. And now I can’t get that goddamn Kenny Loggins song out of my head.
For your ranting pleasure: ribbon colors
I’m tired of it too. I want colors to just be colors again.
Posted by Lynn on 10/24 at 10:05 PMWhat color is the “Stop Wearing Those Stupid Hypocritical Ribbons and Trying to Make People Think You Give a $#!+ About Stuff” ribbon?
Posted by McGehee on 10/25 at 10:15 AMHowever, I do know of one person, my wife’s aunt, who recently had a very close call with breast cancer because she couldn’t get her regular doctor to listen to her about the changes she was detecting in her breasts.
Of course, to hear the aunt tell it, what’s wrong with the health care system isn’t stupid doctors or unassertive patients, but the big, bad insurance industry.
Posted by McGehee on 10/25 at 10:18 AMMy real problem with Footloose is that it begat Dirty Dancing.
I live nearby the town that Footloose was filmed in, and while it was/is a conservative town, dancing was always viewed as a positive thing.
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/25 at 04:00 PMThese ‘sharing and caring’ types who think breast cancer was ignored should read Theodore Dalrymple’s Mass Listeria, specifically the account of Fanny Burney’s mastectomy - in 1810, sans anaesthetic.
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/25 at 06:46 PMHi,
You all might want to visit http://www.assertivepatient.com on the topic of PINK, BC awareness, using a disease to sell merchandise etc…Glad to have found this blog, via Kathy Shadie’s
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/25 at 08:48 PMFOOTLOOSE was actually based on a real town, where dancing was banned for almost a century. Ban was lifted in 1980 in Elmore City, OK.
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/26 at 11:11 AMI wonder, was it one of those weird laws that no one paid attention to any more, like the law against women parachuting on Sunday that is on the books in Florida? (At least it is according to this website.) Or did they actually take it seriously and foment against “sinful” dancing from the pulpit for all those 100 years?
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/26 at 12:21 PMEven better—according to that same site, in Virginia where I now live it’s against the law to have a bathtub inside your home. I don’t think anyone has paid attention to that law in a very long time…
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/26 at 12:23 PMIt would seem the dancing ban was still a going concern in Elmore City! (Keep in mind this is People Magazine.)
I like this guy:
“No good has ever come from a dance,” thundered the Rev. F.R. Johnson of the United Pentecostal Church in nearby Hennepin—the father of two teenage daughters. “If you have a dance somebody will crash it and they’ll be looking for only two things—women and booze. When boys and girls hold each other, they get sexually aroused. You can believe what you want, but one thing leads to another.”
Now we know that that’s totally not true!
(Full disclosure: I didn’t go to my high school prom. I was on a personal dancing ban. Also proms were stupid and boys were icky, or at least they were in my school.)
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/26 at 12:29 PMAnd don’t get me started on how breast cancer awareness is now cool and hip because of the edgy “save teh boobies” campaigns. Really? So sexualizing a disease is the key to promoting awareness? Awesome. Sucks for the folks with regular old lung, brain, and bone cancer, I guess—there’s no pr0n potential there.
Posted by BAW on 10/26 at 01:36 PMDon’t count on that. There is not just Rule 34; there is also Rule 36.
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/26 at 02:02 PMEr, the PEOPLE article you found is from 1980. It was current with the repeal efforts. Yeah, it was an enforced law, and yes, driven from the pulpit. Jesus didn’t want you to dance until 1980, I guess. In the Purdy MO dance-ban case that went to the Supreme Court, the school district won because the plaintiffs couldn’t prove that the school board’s motivation was driven by religion, and they had the inherent authority to ban school dances. So Purdy MO high school seniors hold their proms in neighboring towns.
Didn’t go to my high school prom either. Had a date with a college gal and she wanted to do something else, which was fine by me.
Most of those “stupid law” sites are not current. My own hometown gets listed in them all the time for silly laws that might have kinda made sense when they were passed in 1880 but that haven’t been on the books even as “dead letters” for a half century or more, but are old repealed laws. EX: There are no current laws allowing cattle drives to use the main street river bridge between certain hours…
Others are often somewhat vague ordinances that people have applied their imaginations to, trying to come up with the most absurd set of hypotheticals that could possibly squeeze into them. Personally I think that variety is kinda fun. Unintended consequences and all that.
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/26 at 04:07 PMEr, the PEOPLE article you found is from 1980.
Er, yes, I know, that’s why I linked to it, to show that I’d looked up the matter, fact-checked, etc. Because I haven’t seen the movie since it came out and I’d forgotten all about the controversy.
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/26 at 05:58 PMMy bad, missed the past tense.
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/26 at 07:58 PMAWARENESS.
Do you know that there is a type of breast cancer that has no lump? It does not show on mammograms.. it can’t be felt with a regular breast examination. It’s symptoms are very sudden.. redness, swelling, hotness.
This type of breast cancer is extremely agressive - so much so they start chemo immediately after diagnosis as controlling it’s spread is more important that removing the cancerous breast.
It is also… almost unfailingly… misdiagnosed as an infection.
My mother was treated unsuccessfully with antibiotics for TWO MONTHS by her family physician - even after we’d done some research on the internet and suggested the possibility of Inflammatory Breast Cancer to her doctor after the first course of antibiotics was unsuccessful.
You all may be sick of *awareness* but my mother’s very life is now hanging by a thread - by just such a lack - BY HER OWN FAMILY PHYSICIAN.
I hope… by this post - that maybe one woman’s life will be saved by DEMANDING a biopsy if any type of breast “infection” does not show signs of improvment within a week of starting antibiotics.
File this under “awareness.”
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/30 at 06:04 PMI’m not sure how leaving a comment on a stranger’s blog is supposed to make your doctor more aware of different kinds of breast cancer. I’m sorry about your mother, but… if your doctor was so unresponsive to your questions, why didn’t you get a second opinion from someone else? I’m aware all right—aware that doctors are only human, and you can’t take their decisions and pronouncements as the Voice of God. I think that’s what’s behind a lot of the ire people have at the medical establishment nowadays—we keep expecting doctors to have miraculous powers of healing, but they’re just fallible humans like us, and they get stuff wrong all the time.
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/30 at 07:07 PMIn the olden days (30 years ago) I had ovarian cancer….The Dr. said you have 30%
chance…take these estrogen pills. Quit crying and carrying on (I was 35 and had a 12 year old daughter).....I remember one day I was alone, and my pity party and fear were getting the better of me. I called the Cancer Organization in my city and asked for sympathy or reassurance anything (at that time you did not tell people you had C)...She said we are all going to die, etc. etc…...
Now you can’t enjoy a Project Runway without hearing of C. Plus all that money goes to officials, etc…..Just give directly to disease of your choice. Look what has happened to Korman (now terrorist linked)
They had to have lawsuit or something to let Jews be a part of it….She was Jewish.Enough is enough.
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/31 at 08:58 AM
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