pilates for pink

It's October, which means that the color of changing leaves is being overshadowed by the newly omnipresent color of fall: pink. It's breast cancer awareness month, and it's hard to avoid the connection between the disease and shopping. That is, the increasingly successful marketing of the disease as a sort of sisterhood through the power of the (pink) purse.

Don't get me wrong: this is a serious disease that tragically affects hundreds of thousands and kills thousands of women (and yes, a few men) every year. But every illness, every serious social issue, should be so lucky as to benefit from the marketing dollars spent (and contributions raised) for awareness, research and treatment. While a very serious disease, the rates of death compared to other diseases affecting women are lower than the abundant attention to the disease might suggest.

It seems that the companies who take part in BCA month cause marketing initiatives benefit from the halo effect as much or more than the companies who receive the donations generated. When Campbell's soup last year changed its iconic red/white soup can labels to pink/white during October, the mom friendly product made a bold move - and albeit a relatively small contribution to the cause. Their $250,000 contribution to research is generous, but feels small compared to the amount of good will to the brand that the campaign surely generated. The Marketing to Women Online Blog suggests that the actual amount contributed works out to $.035/can. Yikes.

The "pinkwashing" of the disease has even generated an anti-marketing backlash and the San Francisco-based organization Breast Cancer Action makes the excellent point: " If shopping could cure breast cancer it would be cured by now." The organization's "Think before you pink" website and related outreach provides an interesting counterpoint to pink-lanthropy that encourages consumers to look beyond effective cause marketing at the sources of risk factors for the disease, including car and cosmetics companies whose pink-beribboned products may be helping cause increased rates of the disease. And, it provides a list of ways of taking action that don't involve shopping, from using public transit (fewer cars on the road = less pollution, a risk factor for breast cancer), to using non-rGBH dairy products.

So, Pilates for Pink? It's basically another attempt to raise dollars for companies, and yes, the disease, this October. Led by Shape magazine in conjunction with a number of advertisers (including Honda, granted a car company that is making some effort to build environmentally friendlier cars), the program seems to be a exposure opportunity for the magazine's key advertisers under a conveniently alliterative umbrella.

My pilates studio is getting behind Pilates for Pink and having a few classes this month that raise funds for breast cancer research. Knowing how little pilates teachers make (teaching is often their source of income to support dance or other creative and low-paying careers), I'm all the more grateful that they'll donate their time to this effort.

So yes, I'm critical of some of the pinkwashing, but on a personal note, I'm grateful for the abundant exposure the disease gets and only wish other serious issues did too. At risk of sharing too much, I found a lump in my breast last, yes, October, while in a remote part of the world (think electricity every other day... if god was willing and the creek didn't rise). Miles from the nearest Internet connection, I was grateful to have a copy of the October issue More Magazine with me which explained the likely (and not so likely) possibilities of what I found. Bottom line, I probably didn't need to worry... but it was hard not to. Six months later, I had surgery and was relieved to learn that it was just a lumpy lump; not cancer.

Will I be at Pilates for Pink classes? You bet. But I'll be wearing my t-shirt to encourage investing in women to overcome extreme poverty, and maybe a red AIDS ribbon, too.