Pink Ribbon Blues

Years after successfully surviving a malignant brain tumor, I still feel guilty for not being the hyper-athletic, diet-conscious superhero we’re told every survivor should be. Years after successfully surviving a malignant brain tumor, I still feel guilty for not being the hyper-athletic, diet-conscious superhero we’re told every survivor should be. Adam Bessie is a San Francisco Bay Area based writer, whose comics on living with cancer have been featured in The Boston Globe, The Pacific Standard, Fusion, and more. Gayle Sulik is a Medical Sociologist and science writer specializing in the fields of oncology and women’s health.

The surreal ordinariness of it all – from appointments and forms to waiting rooms, scripts, and winning advertorials; exams and tests to bills, claims, and satisfaction surveys; sighs of good news to the emotional rollercoaster of risks, harms, hopes, and uncertainties – reduces individuals to a collection of body parts to be increasingly scrutinized and managed. Innovations ranging from vaccines to antibiotics to diagnostic technologies (like X-rays, MRIs, and PET scans) to surgical technologies (lasers, robotic arms, etc.) have helped to mitigate suffering and improve lives. It is quite possible that the chemical cocktail and surgical treatments that quickly aged him 50 years and left him feeling revolted by the look, feel, and smell of his own body might have given him a few months longer to live. She is coauthor (with Barbara Katz Rothman and Bari Meltzer Norman) of Laboring On: Birth in Transition in the United States (Routledge, 2007), author of Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic (Rutgers,1996), co-author (with Barbara Katz Rothman) of Centuries of Solace: Expressions of Maternal Grief in Popular Literature (Temple, 1992), and co-editor of Sex Matters:

In a commercial social movement, activists work cooperatively with industry rather than contentiously against it; they employ market mechanisms like cause marketing and corporate-sponsored runs rather than defiant protests or marches. Cause Marketing, Corporate Influence, and Breast Cancer Policymaking by Patricia Strach examines the politics of market mechanisms–especially cause marketing–as a strategy for public policy change. This book would be excellent for students in business, communications, marketing, social science, and public health as well as for anyone interested in learning about the political and other consequences of commercial social movements (of which Komen is a prime example). Patricia Strach has a dual appointment as Associate Professor in the Departments of Political Science and Public Administration and Policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

In the latest issue of the Breast Cancer Consortium Quarterly, we highlight So Much To Be Done, a must-read collection of writings from breast cancer activist, Barbara Brenner; a new edited collection The Invisible Scars (translated into Catalan), which features the feminist writings of several BCC partners; an important new documentary called The Good Breast, premiering at the Bentonville Film Festival on May 4th; our two cents about another crackpot news story brought to our attention by Health News Review; a thought piece about the dehumanizing impact of biomedical surveillance; a crowdsourcing opportunity to support a new Spanish documentary, ARRETA, on queer experiences of breast cancer; a research brief on representations of breast cancer in the Canadian news; and a beautiful article in memory of author and field biologist Eva Saulitis, who died from metastatic breast cancer earlier this year. Most importantly, we send love and support to our friend and colleague Jody Schoger, who has recently entered hospice care following nearly 3 years of treatment for a breast cancer recurrence. Many thanks to Dr. Rajani Bhatia at the University at Albany (SUNY) and Dr. Laura Heideman at Northern Illinois University’s Center for NGO Leadership and Development for arranging for Gayle Sulik to SKYPE into their classrooms to present “#RETHINK PINK: On March 31, 2016 (In)visible Scars: Feminist Perspectives on Breast Cancer edited by Ana Porroche-Escudero, Gerard Coll-Planas, and Caterina Riba launched at the venue Francesca Bonnemaison in Barcelona, Spain.