A fantastical wish to end breast cancer by adorning yourself in the color pink is a woman's political issue that everybody can get behind. Delightfully deluded, minimal commitment and an excuse to rock that new salmon-toned ensemble you've been shying away from for months, breast-cancer-awareness-ethical-consumerism is the answer to all of our problems. The options are endless -- breast-cancer awareness chips, breast-cancer awareness soap, breast-cancer awareness energy drinks -- the caffeine, taurine and b-vitamins surging through our bodies making us uncontrollably aware, ready for action!
Women's issues and political causes often run into an array of problems that hinder their popularity. How do we avoid the messy bind of those feministic issues that leave us with the inconvenience of acknowledging the personhood of women and their real, substantial well-being? Because we don't want women to get sick and die from something as horrible as breast cancer -- who would go food shopping and make dinner? Susan G. Komen For The Cure, the organization behind the pink-tinged charitable efforts like Breast Cancer Awareness Walks, along with the doppelgänger organization The Avon Foundation have the solution for how to make women's issues popular.
Who could assist them in the most unpopular subject of women's political issues? Seems they take a couple of notes from the most popular purveyor of women: pornography. Equality, liberation and indelible rights don't have universal appeal and in many ways might hinder the efficiency with which your laundry will get washed. How do we support women while also actively oppressing them? Create a dialogue about women's health and political issues by talking about women solely in terms of their bodies, which is how society always deals with the threat of women's unrealized political power and how Avon and Komen's political rhetoric and cause gain such popularity.
Let's do a mini-deconstruction of their most prevalent rhetoric. Sometimes the basest slogans speak louder than any manifesto. "I love Boobies" or "Honk For Hooters" are unfortunately common slogans found on bumper stickers that are meant to be tongue-in-cheek but reveal tacitly the kind of dialogue that is allowed to be had about a woman's issue. The popularity of these slogans speaks volumes. Women are reduced to breasts, objects that need to be preserved, not persons that need to be given at least the sufficient financial and social status necessary to actively secure their own health. If you broach how objective financial inequality and gender norms might contribute to illness, all of a sudden you're a crazed militant. Women can only be brought into the public foray as bodies, to be dissected, to be regulated, to become an object of desire or didactic revulsion. Nothing sells magazines like Kim Kardashian's butt; nothing sells a political idea about women like breasts.
Justin Bieber, hero of women's political causes
"Hey, stop ruining Avon's and Komen's party with your analysis, we're just talking about saving boobs through charitable efforts, like giving proceeds to breast cancer research by selling carcinogenic products. I also happen to really enjoy power walking as a swath of pink-clad women!" -- Dumbest Person Ever
Susan G. Komen For The Cure and the Avon Foundation in all their brilliant political wisdom have used everybody's favorite post-modern ploy of "ethical consumerism." When you hear the word post-modern, you know irony is about to rain down upon you in a torrential form. Aligning themselves with numerous products, these Komen endorsed products will give a portion of their proceeds to cancer research. You can feel good about eating an entire box of Cheez-its because a marginal portion of that money went to the nebulous coffers of a charity-machine-complex. Dove soap too has gotten on board the Komen train at various points. Now the most recent product has arrive as 5-hour Energy: Pink Lemonade Flavor: a condensed energy drink supplement loaded with caffeine, B-vitamins and mysterious, poorly regulated, untested supplements.
Finally, all of the problems of thoughtless consumerism can be solved by thoughtless consumerism, i.e. ethical consumerism. Cheez-its are an oily, carb-bomb junk food product that have most definitely contributed to the obesity epidemic in America if their cheesy-greasy fingertips are any evidence; obesity significantly effects the survival rate of breast cancer patients. I'll give you a hint, the big girls don't make it -- sorry, M4BBW, I know you didn't want to hear that. Dove soap markets itself as a pure, simple product for daily cosmetic and hygiene needs when it is actually rife with potentially carcinogenic ingredients such as parabens; parabens affect hormones in the human body and could increase the risk of breast cancer. 5-hour energy is a supplement product, putting itself outside of the already lax regulations on food by the FDA. An arbitrary blend of amino acids, caffeine and B-vitamins, it has been connected to seizures in children, and the large dosage of caffeine can create potential heart complications. Vitamins supplements, most likely cheap, unregulated vitamins in this product have been correlated with increased risk of death and may very likely be carcinogenic. Susan G. Komen For the Cure feels great about their connections with these disease causing products. Looks like they found their cure, and it is at the bottom of a Cheez-it box -- but a pink Cheez-it box mind you.
Post-modern-irony-connection: successfully completed.
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