the Female Body GOVERNING

4
Pink Ribbons Inc.
The Emergence of Cause-Related Marketing
and the Corporatization
of the Breast Cancer Movement
SAMANTHA KING
Queen’s University
It was very important for me, after my mastectomy, to develop and
encourage my own internal sense of power. I needed to rally my energies
in such a way as to image myself as a fi ghter resisting rather than
as a passive victim suffering. At all times, it felt crucial to me that I
make a conscious commitment to survival. It is physically important
for me to be loving my life rather than to be mourning my breast. I
believe that this love of my life and my self, and the careful tending of
that love by women who love and support me, which has been largely
responsible for my strong and healthy recovery from the effects of
mastectomy. A clear distinction must be made, however, between this
affi rmation of self and the superfi cial farce of “looking on the bright
side of things.”
Like superfi cial spirituality, looking on the bright side of things
is a euphemism used for obscuring certain realities of life, the open
consideration of which might prove threatening or dangerous to the
status quo.
—Lorde, 1980, p. 74
If I had to do it over, would I want breast cancer? Absolutely. I’m not
the same person I was, and I’m glad I’m not. Money doesn’t matter
anymore. I’ve met the most phenomenal people in my life through this.
Your friends and family are what matter now,
—Cherry, cited in Ehrenreich, 2001
In the context of a historical moment in which breast cancer
is widely understood as an enriching experience of the sort Cindy
Cherry described, Audre Lorde’s words, penned on the March 30, 1979,
85