Friday, August 01, 2008

Pink ribbons

Lots of pink shit everywhere. Everywhere you go, there’s a pink ribbon on something. Delta has pink ribbons painted on their airplanes. You can buy Special K Cereal that’s pink. You can buy beverages and flashlights and t-shirts with pink ribbons. Snacks are available with pink ribbons; computer companies sell breast cancer laptops. Games even have pink breast cancer editions.

A real pink ribbon is great. Pin a little ribbon on your lapel and show the world that you truly are concerned about breast cancer or are a breast cancer survivor. Talk about it. Donate money. Run marathons.

But, pink everything is annoying. I don’t want to associate the foods and beverages I purchase with cancerous breasts. The KFC Chicken Breast “Breast Cancer Awareness Collectors Family Tub-o-Chicken Parts” Dinner with pink stripes and a fake pink ribbon mofit is a really bad idea.
In Walgreen’s there was a pink products display of cards and flashlights and candy purses and pink CDs and all kinds of horrible crap manufactured in China. The sign perched above this stuff said that money from purchases would be donated to breast cancer organizations.

The problem is these little pink plastic creations are what is causing the breast cancer in the first place.

Eat Chicken Breast and we'll donate 10% of profits to make women's breasts healthier.

Pollution and Chinese plastic. Yes, let’s make more pollution and more little crappy pink things that show we’re a caring company and we’ll donate 1% of our profits to battle breast cancer!

But how does that work when those little pink keychains in Walgreen's that nobody will buy are reduced to 50% clearance and then 75% clearance prices? The only profits, then, are going to be for Walgreen’s and the smoking factories in Dongguan that make the pink things that will not be sold. They will end up in landfills and contaminate water supplies and poison the breasts of women everywhere because they happen to contain toxic red 11 or something like that. Even though toxic red 11 (or something like that) was discontinued in the USA in 1989 because it caused breast cancer. It is still, of course, probably, used in China and is being used to dye the little candies pink in the giant pink ribbon breast cancer candy pouch made in China.

Whoa. Ranty ranty ranty.
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