RENNER: Let’s embrace pink ribbons that bring awareness to breast cancer

It’s breast cancer awareness month — a special 31 days of wearing pink and loving boobies for (mostly) all the right reasons.

If the sole purpose of the pink ribbon is to create awareness, it has been overwhelmingly successful. Well before pink cupcake liners and ribbon-covered sunglasses were in stores, breast cancer was considered taboo. Due to this branch of cancer’s particularly private nature, it was only to be discussed in confidentiality, between patient and doctor, behind closed doors. There was such shame surrounding the disease that women were reluctant to even be examined at all, let alone wear pink ribbons or applaud celebrities for having the strength to publicly announce a diagnosis.

Betty Ford, who was a celebrity during her time as first lady of the United States in the early 1970s, is often credited with starting the movement to abolish this way of thinking and begin the era of breast cancer awareness. The day after she underwent a mastectomy, a surgical removal of the whole breast, she gave the okay for newspapers across the country to divulge the details of her experience — something that had never been done before. She received more than 50,000 pieces of mail in response. Since then, numerous public, inspirational figures such as Giuliana Rancic, Andrea Mitchell, Wanda Sykes, Cynthia Nixon and Sheryl Crow have felt comfortable speaking openly about their experiences, and some even sport some pink garb at fundraising events.

It all started in 1985, when the American Cancer Society teamed up with one of the big guys in the drug industry at the time to promote mammography, the primary method of breast cancer detection. The movement stalled here for about six years, until the Susan G. Komen Foundation, “the world’s largest nonprofit source of funding for fighting breast cancer,” dyed the red AIDS ribbon pink. Since then, the color pink has become iconic in the fight against this division of cancer. If you were to visit the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month website, you’d leave with a pink eye.

But the rise of pink propaganda comes at a cost — literally — to the consumer, and a lot of people really have a problem with this. Companies have indisputably commercialized on NBCAM, and you can find some pretty ridiculous products being sold online in the name of “awareness.” Does a pink cupcake liner make you more aware of breast cancer? Maybe. But it’s tough to define what awareness means, and it’s tough for the nauseous chemotherapy patient to see her disease trademarked on a cupcake she can’t stomach herself.

But for many, the problems with Pinktober go much deeper than this. Breast Cancer Action, a website solely focused on this topic, coined the phrase “think before you pink,” and created a campaign that urges consumers of NBCAM merchandise to make informed decisions. It’s also very aggressive in doing so — there’s even a “take action” button right on the website’s homepage. This tactic is well justified, however, when recalling the news from May that four cancer charities were accused of fraud. This is where the ambiguous nature of words and phrases such as “awareness” and “good cause” becomes a real problem. When it was found out that these “charities” were spending nearly $200 million of donated money on dating websites, meals at Hooters, jet skies and cruises, the pink cupcake liners seemed harmless.

Maybe the NBCAM has gone a little overboard with the pink products, but if you think about this issue compared to what it was like in Ford’s time, we’ve come pretty far in the awareness department. For a lot of people, the definition of this word might be the sticking point. So let’s define it. Awareness is being able to Google “breast cancer” and get 115 million (and counting) results. It’s the fact that 66.8 percent of women over 40 had a mammogram in 2013, moving up significantly from about 29 percent in 1987. And that’s the only reason any of these anti-Pinktober groups have any authority.

The fact is, without awareness, no one would even be able to have an opinion on the matter in the first place. Awareness is what gives organizations like Breast Cancer Action the knowledge to even speak on the topic of breast cancer. It’s what gives celebrities the courage to speak about their lives to a well-informed, well-aware public without backlash. There may be some issues in the big-business side of Pinktober, but the core meaning behind it is pure and good. It doesn’t matter if it’s pink, blue or zebra striped — if there’s a way to boost awareness and break down old stigmas, to unite people for a common cause and maybe remind one more person to book a mammography appointment, Pinktober campaigns are worth your time.