October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM) is an annual health campaign organized by major breast cancer charities every October to increase awareness of the disease and to raise funds for research into its cause, prevention and cure.
During Breast Cancer Awareness Month, people raise money by organizing activities such as a “pink day” when employees wear pink clothing or accessories at work. The money raised is donated to research programs or organizations that offer care for breast cancer.
Drugstore.com features nine top-selling products that help benefit BCA charities. With part of your purchases going to breast-cancer research, you can buy:
- pink earphones (Pink Ribbon challenge)
- hairstyling iron (ceramic)
- Clarisonic skin-care brush (which I have but not in pink)
- pink bead necklace (“Emitations”)
- Christina Applegate bracelet (as an inspirational token of her fight)
- personal massager (the intimate kind that women like)
- Tweezerman petite tweezers (which I also have but in red)
- Verilux natural-spectrum desk lamp (which I have in black)
AstraZeneca, which manufactures breast cancer drugs Arimidex and Tamoxifen, founded the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in 1985. The aim in the beginning was to promote mammography as the most effective weapon in the fight against breast cancer.
In 1991, the Susan G. Komen Foundation handed out Pink Ribbons to participants in its New York City race for breast cancer survivors. In 1993, Evelyn Laude of the Estée Lauder Company founded The Breast Cancer Research Foundation and established the Pink Ribbon as its symbol.
The term “pinkwashing” has been used to describe the actions of companies that manufacture and use chemicals that are linked to breast cancer while at the same time publicly supporting charities focused on curing the disease.
It has also been alleged that more money is spent on marketing “pink products” than is donated to the cause. Likely true… but if you need a product to begin with and the price is the same as that from another company that doesn’t make donations, might as well go with the pink one.