Branding Breast Cancer

"October is an awareness month for breast cancer and domestic violence. Yet media coverage shows we'd rather be aware of breasts, even sick ones, than talk about abuse." I must honestly admit that when I first read this subtitle, it made me a little sick; have we as a society actually reached a point where we make two causes of equal importance compete against one another (realistically, capitalism in its most extreme form)? I will admit reading Marshall's article exposing the connection between pink branding and advertising has reached a questionable level, especially as companies such as Ralph Lauren begin using 'sex' to advertise for breast cancer awareness, I cannot say that I am completely against such means. Having members of my family who have both passed from breast cancer, and others that are current breast cancer survivors, I completely believe that all means necessary should be used in order to raise capital for breast cancer research in order to find cures and treatment for this disease that has impacted the lives of so many.

In addition, while I do not agree that domestic violence should take the back seat in terms of awareness, I do understand, economically how it has. While Marshall's article points out that 967 women were killed by men they knew (with statistics from 2005), in 2007, 40,460 women were expected to die from breast cancer (http://www.cancer.org/downloads/STT/BCFF-Final.pdf). In simple terms of supply and demand, there are a far greater number of people demanding action in awareness of breast cancer than those demanding awareness for domestic violence, therefore a greater supply of awareness products for breast cancer are being produced by the capitalist machine. 

Marshall's article also points out that breasts are more marketable than black eyes; however, I believe that while this is due to the unreasonable stigma associated with speaking up against abuse, it also has to due with the fact that people can come together in order to unite against a cancer (non-human) invading and destroying another human's body much easier than they can unite against the deviant moral attitudes which allows some humans to abuse other humans. In general, we as a society tend to not wish to discuss anything considered taboo, which we should then characterize as a fault of us as individuals, as compared to blaming corporations for marketing the easier product.