I like it on the...wait, what?!

October 26, 2010

Scott Capozza, MS, PT

Recently on Facebook, I noticed a lot of my female friends making these suggestive posts.

“I like it on the table.” “I like it on the couch and sometimes on the kitchen counter.”

I was thinking to myself...what is this all about?

Come to find out, it was the answer to a question about where women liked to place their handbags. And somehow, the concept of where women place their handbags was supposed to get people talking about breast cancer awareness.

My first question is: if you have a method of getting people to talk/post/whatever on a topic, but a percentage of the population has no idea what you’re talking about, does it really raise awareness of your original message?

October is breast cancer awareness month, and unlike the Facebook handbag question, there are many more obvious methods to get this important message across to the masses. The biggest one I’ve noticed is that the National Football League has pink on all of its players, coaches, and referees. Pink chin straps. Pink gloves. Pink whistles.

My interpretation of all of this pink in October is something like this: more awareness of breast cancer leads to more women who get screened earlier for breast cancer, which leads to more women catching the disease earlier, which leads to less invasive treatments, which leads to more breast cancer survivors.

If that is indeed the case, then that’s great. I’m all for it. I am pro-pink. I think the pink movement is great. Which leads me to my next question.

What about the other cancers? When do they get their turn?

Full disclosure here: I’ve always felt a little jaded being a testicular cancer survivor in this respect. There’s lots of pink out there, but despite my asking around, nobody seems to know what color ribbon represents testicular cancer (TC) if it has one at all. I met a fellow TC survivor a few years back and we got to talking about our lack of representation. He had a great idea: the symbol for TC should be a black bow tie. TC is the young man’s cancer, and the black bow tie would be a classy way to spread awareness. I emailed his idea around to several cancer organizations, thinking it would be a huge hit and they would want to get behind it and make it work. I never got any responses.

I know Major League Baseball does a weekend of blue for prostate cancer awareness at Father’s Day, but this hardly seems proportional (the NFL players will have pink on them for a quarter of their season, and baseball only does it for just over 1% of their season.) What about teal for ovarian cancer? What about lung cancer? According to the National Cancer Institute, more women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010 (207,090) than lung cancer (105,770); however, almost twice as many women will die from lung cancer (71,080) than breast cancer (39,840). Is that because women aren’t getting screened early enough for lung cancer, and by the time it is diagnosed, the disease has spread? Why isn’t there a bigger push for lung cancer awareness? Does anyone even know the color for lung cancer awareness?

It's pearl; I had to look it up.

But doesn’t that prove my point? I see a pink ribbon somewhere, and I immediately know it’s for breast cancer awareness. If I saw someone with a pearl ribbon on, I would have no clue what it was for. Why don’t we have national sporting events where the players all wear pearl ribbons?

Is the reason that there is more exposure for breast cancer awareness because there are more breast cancer survivors? Maybe, but this wasn’t always the case. The Susan G. Komen Foundation was named after a woman who had breast cancer, but it was her sister who started the foundation after Susan passed away.

The forces who have made breast cancer awareness what it is today really do need to be commended and thanked, because it’s working. What if there was similar recognition for other kinds of cancer? If businesses and sponsors got behind supporting screenings for other cancers, would it have the same impact?

Cancer is unlike any other chronic disease. It comes in so many forms and variations, and each variation carries its own unique (and often times maddening) challenges. Each and every cancer deserves our attention and efforts toward prevention. Each and every cancer survivor deserves and needs our support, both during and after treatment.

Meanwhile, I’m going to order myself an orchid ribbon, which apparently is the color for testicular cancer (I had to look that up, too.)

I still think the black bow tie is the way to go...