In Welcome To Cancerland By Barbara Ehrenreich, she uses her personal experience with breast cancer to discuss the problems with how it’s portrayed and the effects that this has on the women who have it. She stresses the issues surrounding the different methods of breast cancer awareness and how these methods infantilize women and make them seem inferior and weak. In her article, she dismantles the breast cancer phenomenon by shedding light on the effects of marketing and the problems with corporate sponsorship.

Breast cancer comes with the infestation of pink products that are meant to help you feel better about your situation, but instead just make things worse. This cornucopia of bears and pink-ribbon-themed breast cancer products, as Ehrenreich describes, does nothing but eclipse the gravity of the situation and the aspects of care that need to be changed. The way that companies market pink ribbons and teddy bears make women and their situations seem childlike and not as serious as they really are. Ehrenreich states that “in some versions of the prevailing gender ideology, femininity is by its nature incompatible with full adulthood” (Ehrenreich, 46) and this is clearly seen in the “ultra feminine” theme of breast cancer that is pushed in our marketplace. The constant association of women with breast cancer to the color pink and things like teddy bears infantilizes them because it equates cancer to “cuteness” and makes people perceive it as a juvenile situation. The inclusion of bracelets and crayons in tote bags for cancer proves this, and only supports the companies incorrect ideal that “regression to a state of childlike dependency puts one in the best frame of mind with which to endure the prolonged and toxic treatment” (Ehrenreich, 46). In reality, these are all material objects that are marketed by corporations to forcefully promote the success of their products without acknowledging how the actual people being affected by breast cancer may feel.

  The way that society conditions women to idealize beauty reflects in the prominence of pink cosmetics and jewelry which are “understood as a response to the treatments’ disastrous effects on looks” (Ehrenreich, 46). Looks play a huge role in the lives of women because they are expected to keep up a certain level of beauty, regardless of what they may be going through personally. This is why many breast cancer patients undergo some kind of breast surgery after a mastectomy. The social implications of breast cancer place an unnecessary weight on women to return to their previous states and still maintain the superficial status-quo. Corporations wrongfully use this to their advantage when they purposely infiltrate their pink cosmetic products or apparel to “help” women maintain beauty in their time of need. “The infantilizing trope is perplexing. Certainly, men diagnosed with prostate cancer do not receive gifts of matchbox cars” (Ehrenreich, 47). The forceful implication of this “infantile” marketing reflects the way gender roles are dominant in our society and how this causes the truth about certain illnesses to be obscured. The social contributors to this structural inequality impact people’s view of breast cancer because it causes society to be aware of the wrong things and support behaviors that don’t truly contribute to the cause.

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