Addressing ‘Pinkwashing’ ‒ It’s Time to Use the Pink Ribbon for Actual Action

This Blog post represents a partnership between the Women in Medicine Summit and Healio Women in Oncology. An excerpt appears blow, and please find the full length piece at Healio’s Women in Oncology blog.

Every October, there are pink ribbons everywhere for breast cancer awareness month. It often raises the question: “How much of the money spent on products branded with pink ribbons is actually going toward supporting breast cancer research and advocacy?”

History of the pink ribbon

Breast cancer awareness month, which initially started as a week in October in 1985 to promote mammography as the most effective tool against breast cancer, has now become an annual month-long international campaign for education, awareness, action and raising funds to support breast cancer research.

The first breast cancer ribbon was actually a peach ribbon created by advocate Charlotte Haley who started a grassroots effort to spread awareness of the lack of funding for breast cancer prevention when her family members were diagnosed with breast cancer.

After Haley declined requests from Self Magazine for the rights to the ribbon, Evelyn Lauder, senior vice president of Estée Lauder, and Alexandra Penney, editor of Self Magazine, were advised to pick another color — and thus, the pink ribbon was created, quickly becoming the universally recognizable symbol for breast cancer.

About the authors: Laila Agrawal, MD, is a hematologist/oncologist at Norton Healthcare in Kentucky. Eleonora Teplinsky, MD, is the head of breast and gynecologic medical oncology at Valley Health System and a clinical assistant professor of medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.