Today I’m linking up with FemFest, a three-day synchroblog devoted to exploring feminism and its importance, co-hosted by J.R. Goudeau, Danielle Vermeer, and Preston Yancey. Click over to Danielle’s blog to peruse the rest of these amazing stories, or to contribute your own. 

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This story of mine, it’s about a woman and her daughter. It’s about a fight for life and a fight for faith.

And it’s also, I’m discovering, about a fight for feminism.

I’m not sure my mom would have put it that way. She had some negative opinions about feminism, most of them owing to the particular breed she grew up with in the late 70’s and early 80’s. As she told it, there was a lot of hostility back then. A lot of confusion. My mother was college educated, the primary breadwinner in our household, a leader in her church. She would never have said that men and women aren’t created equal. But if I had to put words to it, “feminism” was not the lens through which she understood gender equality. She understood what it meant to be equal in the eyes of God, and that’s what mattered most to her. When feminism began to form, it was mostly in secular culture. I don’t think she knew back then how one could inform the other.

But as I read through some of the things she wrote about her experience as a young woman, as a wife, as a mother, as a cancer patient, I’m seeing this theme emerge. On one level, this is just a story about coping with tragedy, about the tension of grief and faith.

But because it is about breast cancer, it is also a story about women’s health.

And you could look at our family history and point to genetics as the main culprit, but that would only be half the story. From the dosage of birth control her (male) gynecologist prescribed her without batting an eye, to the endless treatments and choices she made to try and defy doctor’s prognoses once she was diagnosed with cancer, everything about my mother’s experience tells me a story about someone else deciding what women should do with their bodies. It tells me about dangerous assumptions and naive women and sickness being passed from one generation to the next, daughters without mothers and mothers without daughters.

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Do I have kids now or later or never?

If I don’t want to have kids right now, what kind of birth control is healthiest for my body?

Do I have to take responsibility for birth control because – physiologically speaking – I am the one that will get pregnant? What can I expect of my partner?

Once I have kids, how do I stay healthy enough to raise them? When should I start having mammograms?

These are the questions she faced. These are the questions I face. These are the questions all women face everywhere, all the time.

My mom became her own advocate, she started asking questions, she took the reigns and outlived her doctors’ death sentence by several years. But it wasn’t until the tests came back malignant. It wasn’t until a lot more research had been conducted and showed that super high doses of birth control might actually produce something scarier than an “untimely” baby.*

And I guess the thing about feminism that I need, the reason why feminism matters, is that like breast cancer, it has motivated me to be my own advocate.

Feminism has motivated me to not only be concerned about my health and my future, but to do something about it, even if it’s telling my husband I’m not okay with taking a pill; I want you to wear a condom.

And feminism motivated me to marry a man that could look me square in the eye and say, I am willing to do that for you because more than anything, I just want you to be healthy.

And feminism is motivating me to tell this story, this story of a mother and a daughter, of breast cancer and women’s health, of grief and faith and feminism, so that our daughters grow up independent, happy and safe in their own bodies.

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What’s your story with feminism? What has your experience been with learning to advocate for your own body? How has this factored into your choices with birth control? All voices are welcome here. And yes, male readers, you’re welcome to share your experience and understanding, too. 

*For more information on the troubling correlation between birth control and the increasing rate of breast cancer among women ages 25 to 34, see this report published by NPR today. Note that the NPR article clearly states that this is merely a correlation, not a confirmed cause, and that in my post I am merely writing about my mother’s experience and the likelihood that her dose increased her risk of breast cancer, which was hormone receptor positive.

I love the month of October for a lot of reasons, but it’s also a month that I dread every year. While the leaves are vivid with color, retail stores everywhere are awash with pink, because it is “breast cancer awareness month.”

Most of you reading this know that I lost my mother to metastatic breast cancer in January, so it’s not my disregard for breast cancer awareness that bothers me about the pink ribbon. The reason I am so sick of the pink ribbon is because in my experience, the pink ribbon does more for the person that purchases it than those affected by the disease.

Nowhere is the problem with “pinkwashing” more evident than with Etsy and their “Tickled Pink” email and subsequent corporate cop-out.

Two weeks ago, Nicole Smith, a member of Etsy’s marketing team, curated an email full of sellers’ items clad in the ubiquitous pink “breast cancer awareness” ribbons. Though I have my qualms with the pink ribbon for all it does and does not represent, the email seems innocent enough until you click through each of the listings. Only 8 out 24 items listed in the “Tickled Pink” email actually claim to donate to the cause they tout, yet Nicole’s email encourages Etsy users to purchase the pieces as a way to “show love to the women in your life.”

In short, these Etsy sellers have happily capitalized on a sensitive issue, thoughtlessly tacking pink ribbons onto their products without supporting the cause itself. Etsy’s celebratory endorsement of the sellers’ deplorable opportunism only adds insult to injury. Since Etsy earns money from each item sold on their site, both they and their sellers are profiting from others’ pain, and from their consumers’ ignorance, because let’s face it – not everyone is going to read the fine print to make sure their purchase donates to the cause.

And herein lies the issue with pinkwashing, as Etsy has so finely exemplified for us :

When there is no charitable action behind the product – on the part of the seller or the buyer – it turns breast cancer awareness into a trendy parade of pink shit, making breast cancer awareness about the appearance of generosity, rather than actively making a difference in the lives of those in need. It gives consumers buying bags of pretzels and footballs and tennis-shoes – or in this case, mugs and iPhone covers – the feeling of having been generous, without their actually having to do anything.

But as Hila so aptly states,

“Consumerism is not ‘awareness’ about cancer; it’s consumerism. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”

That realization alone is enough to make blood boil, but then there is Etsy’s dismissive and impersonal response to the criticism over their “breast cancer awareness” marketing tactics. For examples, see Nicole Smith’s tweet to Acacia, Mary Andrew’s forum response and quote for the Daily Dot. As if those responses weren’t bad enough, there’s Marie Kelly’s response to my forum inquiry, which makes it sound like I’m just another Negative Nancy trolling the internet. And then there’s Nicole Smith’s reply to my private message on Etsy, which although I can’t reveal its contents due to Etsy’s site policy, was nearly verbatim what Mary Andrews published publicly, with zero acknowledgement of my personal story as a daughter of a breast cancer patient or as an Etsy seller that actually donated a portion of my profits to my mother.

Etsy has had ample opportunity to express solidarity with those who have been directly effected by breast cancer and hold themselves accountable to their brand as a “community of artists, creators, collectors, thinkers and doers,” but instead, they have chosen to make excuses for themselves and label criticism as “negative reference to other sellers,” as if voicing our frustrations and concern equates to hate speech.

This, ultimately, is why I have lost faith in Etsy’s brand, and it is the reason why I am choosing to close my Etsy shop :

They have made it clear that my voice doesn’t matter, nor do Acacia, or Jane, or Hila, or anyone else that is disturbed by their actions.

I’m not just upset by their ignorant and insensitive attempt at marketing to those affected by breast cancer. I am angered by their continued disregard of the voices in their community asking them to be accountable for their actions.

Nothing says corporate cop-out like a deliberate blind eye to someone else’s pain.

I’ll finish this post by saying that Etsy and other corporations like them are only partially at fault. As consumers we have to acknowledge our responsibility in this issue by being active in our charitable efforts. The pink ribbon on your bumper, Facebook profile picture, sweater, cereal box, means absolutely nothing if you are not reaching out to the people around you.

True generosity is radically active.

It is not fluffy or pink or cutesy or marketable. It is not the over-sexualized saving of second base. It is not the color of your bra in a cryptic Facebook status. It is tangible, it is personal, it is scary, it is unnerving. It is ugly-crying on the couch with your friend as she (or he!) discusses their diagnosis.

If you know someone battling breast cancer, or any other terminal illness for that matter, then reach out. Make them a meal, run a marathon for them, hold a benefit for them, send them a card, cry with them, promise to care for their families when they are gone. THAT is how you support a breast cancer patient.

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