Breast cancer culture

Breast cancer culture

Breast cancer culture, or pink ribbon culture, is the set of activities, attitudes, and values that surround and shape breast cancer in public. The dominant values are selflessness, cheerfulness, unity, and optimism. Appearing to have suffered bravely is the passport into the culture.
The woman with breast cancer is given a cultural template that constrains her emotional and social responses into a socially acceptable discourse: She is to use the emotional trauma of being diagnosed with breast cancer and the suffering of extended treatment to transform herself into a stronger, happier and more sensitive person who is grateful for the opportunity to become a better person. Breast cancer thereby becomes a rite of passage rather than a disease. To fit into this mold, the woman with breast cancer needs to normalize and feminize her appearance, and minimize the disruption that her health issues cause anyone else. Anger, sadness and negativity must be silenced.
As with most cultural models, people who conform to the model are given social status, in this case as cancer survivors. Women who reject the model are shunned, punished and shamed.
The culture is criticized for treating adult women like little girls, as evidenced by "baby" toys such as pink teddy bears given to adult women.
The primary purposes or goals of breast cancer culture are to maintain breast cancer's dominance as the preëminent women's health issue, to promote the appearance that society is "doing something" effective about breast cancer, and to sustain and expand the social, political, and financial power of breast cancer activists