
Colours come with baggage. Culturally specific baggage, heavy with meaning and accumulated over time. And amongst all its friends in the rainbow, very few are carrying around as much weight as pink.
Pink, of course, was the colour of boy children and Empire in the Victorian era, signifying proto masculinity, military might, oppressive strength and dominance. But over almost a century of decades, the stereotypical connotations of pink have altered beyond all recognition. They have in fact come to mean the opposite: girl children, femininity in general, weakness, frivolity. As Jessica Pryce-Jones, writing in The Times yesterday stated, “Pink is for princesses, Barbie, little girls, underwear and marketing organisations.”
Why was Pryce-Jones listing pink’s supposedly shameful list of signifiers? Because Breakthrough Breast Cancer founder and four time breast cancer survivor Audrey Birt has had enough of the pink ribbon that symbolises the disease and is the focus for much of the awareness and fund raising that surrounds it. “There is nothing pretty or fluffy” about breast cancer, says Birt. Women suffer greatly from the illness, for years beyond their often traumatic radical treatment. We live with the physical changes and the fear forever. It recurs. We die, too young. For her, the pink ribbon is an inadequate way to reflect this experience.
What colour of ribbon exists that could possibly reflect it? Birt has earned the right to say whatever she wants on this subject — and with all that hard-won experience, she deserves to be listened to. But as much as I respect her, I just cannot agree that the pink ribbon is somehow responsible for the fact that breast cancer, in her view, is seen as something that sufferers are endure whilst dressing “like a fairy.” Having had breast cancer knowingly or otherwise now for two years, I haven’t once felt the need or urge to don any breast cancer related fairy apparel. Nor have any of my friends, family or anyone else I know with the illness. That people do — I have seen pictures of them raising money for charity whilst running wearing pink tutus and other paraphernalia — is their business, and I thank them for their efforts. It is not by any means mandatory.
I do, however, wear and surround myself with a LOT of pink. I love pink so much that some people in Brighton still have me listed in their phone as Pink Emma from my permanently pink dyed hair in the late 90s. I don’t know if I have always loved it. As a child I longed for Barbies and beautiful girl’s clothes and never received them so maybe my adult pink-love is as a consequence of that. I am sure there is some quite sinister gender conditioning in there and despite my long held and much vaunted feminist beliefs, the pink of despised girls and dolls has wheedled its way into my consciousness, marking me forever as a co-opted, patriarchal assimilator.
Or has it? What is so wrong with little girls? Aren’t they as varied and diverse a breed as little boys (who also, in my household, love to wear pink)? I have the pleasure of knowing quite a few little girls and they are feisty, funny, bold, shy, silly, serious, artistic, frivolous, learned, wilful — everything anyone else can be. Sometimes all in the space of half an hour. If pink is their colour, I want in. Why should we encourage this sneering against pink? The sort of sneering that encourages children to turn against boys who choose to wear it to school, as my son experienced at the age of only seven.
As for princesses, I know that Pryce-Jones, writing in support of Birt, means the idea of being drawn about in some sort of vehicle, wearing a big dress, being pampered and deferred to — the ubiquitous banality of the concept. I too find it difficult that this seems to be the only imaginative option available to girls for play and women for wedding ideas. But if I remember my own “playing at princesses” as a child, there was just quite a lot of stomping about in the garden, getting the nylon dresses muddy and forcing snails to participate in the re-enactment of various fairy tales or domestic role-play with a tiara on. And options for men in the wedding world are hardly ground breaking. The whole thing is a bit of an anachronism, but as usual it is the women who get the blame. I hardly need mention that if nuanced, complex and interesting princesses are what you are after, Britain’s recent and distant history contains a wealth to choose from.
The ongoing commodification of breast cancer is a concern to some and pink plays a role in this. Pink is a strongly visible contrast to the monotony of grey, black and navy that most wardrobes consist of, so of course designers love to splash it all over the place. During Breast Cancer Awareness month in October, I lost count of the number of breast cancer themed products I saw being sold, with a percentage of the profits always going to charity, of course. They ranged from the multitude of t-shirts on offer to high-end jewellery and, bizarrely for me, a pair of VANS printed all over with boobs of different skin tones (no pink) and a mastectomy scar. Even though I love VANS , wear them all the time, love boobs, and I have and am growing to love my mastectomy scar, these were not going in my online basket. I don’t wear or buy any breast cancer “stuff” — I don’t see it as a part of my identity that I need to proclaim. But if these products raise money to combat the disease or support patients, and awareness — why not?
There is a misconception that breast cancer, once diagnosed and treated is done, cured, over, and I think this is what Audrey Birt is getting at in her comments. In fact, the truth is very different. If breast cancer has spread to your lymph nodes, as it did with all of mine in my left armpit, then chemo / radio / hormone therapy are all an attempt at preventing recurrence. But they are just that: an attempt. You may have No Evidence of Disease for several years — maybe even ten. You might think you are cured. But, as we have heard so much in the last month, secondary breast cancer can return at any point, and GPs are spectacularly bad at spotting it when it does. The absolutely devastating, unnecessarily young death of Deborah Orr should be a rallying cry and a turning point in our perception of this disease and its consequences for sufferers.
Breast cancer is a vile disease. It has driven a bulldozer through my life and left me amongst the wreckage, trying to salvage the bits and pieces of myself that I still recognise. I still recognise my love of colour, of pink in particular. I cry a lot — maybe my personal pink ribbon can represent my weeping eyes, rosy with tears? Or my mastectomy scar, starting to fade from an angry red to a no less vibrant fuschia? Or my tongue as I try to tell the breast owning world that they need to check them for signs of cancer? Or my left nipple, pink on my pale skin, weird and inverted, clearly telling me that something was very wrong but dismissed by the medical professional I showed it to?
Estee Lauder launched the pink ribbon in 1992. Before that, I assume as a result of the shame and mystery that still surrounds so much of female biology, the disease was considered a taboo subject — little discussed and known about it. As a teenager, pre-pink ribbon, I knew about it. My grandma had to have a double mastectomy. I saw her scars and her prostheses hanging up in the bathroom when she (gratefully, I now realise) was able to take them off at the end of the day. Despite the years of campaigning since 1992 and the prevalence of pink, we are still not diagnosing this disease early enough. We are still not recognising it is a life altering illness that is far from done and dusted. That it comes in many guises and can elude detection by the standard clinical tests. That it damages our mental health and our ability to function in the world as we did pre-diagnosis. That the treatment, both radical and ongoing, brings with it a raft of unpleasantness and trauma.
The pink ribbon is the symbol of our disease, like it or not. Given that one in eight women are diagnosed with breast cancer, I want to see more of it, not less. Just as Barbie can both be a presidential candidate and very much enjoy shopping for accessories in the mall, the colour pink can represent whatever we want it to. It is time to recognise that pink is powerful.
