by Faith Kuzma
Recently Dina Goldstein’s photo essay struck at the Disney princess myth by exposing what the series called Fallen Princesses. This particular photo shows Rapunzel as a very youthful cancer patient with her golden locks shorn. The image is starkly evocative and apt, as literally documented recently by David Jay’s Scar project. Thirty-year-old women with no family history of breast cancer have no business showing up at the oncologist’s office. Goldstein’s image is successful without being sexualized, as are many of the images in Pink-tober ads to promote breast cancer awareness.
“Rather than being playful, which is what these campaigns are after,” Peggy Orenstein writes, “sexy cancer suppresses discussion of real cancer, rendering its sufferers – the ones whom all this is supposed to be for - invisible.”
Moreover, while a month-long breast cancer awareness campaign or Pink-tober gets promoted by various cancer charities and purveyors of popular cultural, it is widely called pinkwashing, its basic denial as clear as the cigarette makers disputing the now accepted truth that smoking causes cancer. Just as with cigarette manufacturers, the breast cancer industry represents the interests of governmental agencies and big business more than the women suffering.
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