In it, I questioned all the pink ribbons being slapped on everything from cell phones to chocolate bars; and wondered out loud about corporate profit-teering from an illness that is hurting so many of us. I didn’t have any easy answers, and instead decided that rather than promote one of the many pink campaigns landing in my email box from PR firms to share some tips for early prevention.

With the Susan G. Komen Foundation in hot water, the issue of pink-washing is top of mind with many bloggers. For me, with a good friend preparing for chemo, cancer has been on my mind daily. So when I came across Annie’s most excellent post at PhD in Parenting titled “Cancer Sucks, Pink is Profitable, and Cures are Magically Blameless,” I had to share it with you.

She starts her post by admitting “that I haven’t always questioned pink washing as carefully as I should in the past.” This, I’m sure, we can all admit to. It feels good to buy pink … to feel like we’re contributing to a worthy and important cause.

However, she concludes, with the help of a documentary titled Pink Ribbons Inc., that pink is only profitable if it focuses on finding a cure–not prevention. Her words:

The bulk of breast cancer research money in past years has gone into researching a cure. In the movie, they note that only 3 to 5 percent of funds go towards prevention of breast cancer.  In Canada, around 6.5 percent of money raised goes towards research into risk factors and risk reduction. Why is the number so low?

• Is it because the prospect of a cure generates hope and therefore attracts more research dollars?
• Is it because the focus on the cure doesn’t upset any corporate sponsors that may be contributing to the cause?
• Is it because preventing cancer may dry up the enormous cash cow that pink ribbon campaigns have become?

And yet, more than anything, we need to find out why cancer rates are high and what we can do as a society in terms of prevention.

This image is not from a real campaign but illustrates an all-too-familiar corporate dichotomy. Image source.

Let’s demand accountability in exchange for our donation dollars.

To read more on this issue, please check out Annie’s post in full here, as well as by visiting Breast Cancer Action.

Edited to add: No, I’m not being a spoil-sport when I don’t play along with your “what colour” bra are you wearing meme on Facebook. It’s a f*cking terrible idea, people! (And you know I rarely swear on this blog, so I’m pretty serious here.) Please read this post at Toddler Planet to understand why. 

And another thing I’d like to add as well: As one reader as been so good as to share, the Komen story has evolved since I wrote this post. There’s a lot I didn’t know about this organization. You can learn more by reading this post by Jessica Gottlieb. I warn you though, it might make you feel like vomiting.

Liam Neeson in the film The Grey. Photo credit.

It’s old fashioned and sexist to believe that men should all be strong and brave, just as it would be to believe that all women should be nurturing and gentle. But the news has been filled with stories of weak, dishonourable men as of late. And it is making me long for a time (fictional or not) for when “men were men.”

First there is the Penn State football scandal in which assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky repeatedly abused young boys. On several occasions, according to this report posted today, Sandusky was caught in the middle of abusing a child:

• In the fall of 2000, a janitor named James Calhoun witnesses Sandusky pinning a young boy up against a wall and abusing him. He does not pull Sandusky off the child and get the child to safety.
• In this same year, another employee, Ronald Petrosky, is cleaning the showers and comes across Sandusky abusing another young boy. Again, another man witnesses a man abusing a child and does not intervene and get the child to safety.
• In 2002, a graduate assistant to the team, Mike McQueary, comes across Sandusky sodomizing a young boy. Yet again, another a grown man does not intervene and get the child to safety.

I like to think that if I had been in the position of any of the three men above that I would run up screaming and yelling and try to push Sandusky away from the child. I also strongly believe that the men I know best would rather risk a black eye and upsetting an influential sports figure on campus, than live with knowing that they walked away from a child who desperately needed help. It’s one thing to hear of suspected abuse, but to witness it in the act not intervene? I simply can’t understand this.

Next, we have Captain Schettino of the Costa Concordia. His ship goes down, and rather than working to organize a rescue, he jumps overboard and saves himself. From a lifeboat, he watches the passengers frantically trying to escape while a Coast Guard captain urges him to go back on board to assist with the rescue. The entire conversation between Schettino and the Coast Guard is recorded and you can hear the captain’s weak excuses for not going back and the Guard finally demanding that he do — ” Get back aboard, damn it!” – to no avail. There are 11 passengers confirmed dead, and another 23 still unaccounted for.

And last but not least, the major news from yesterday was the guilty verdict in the Shafia case. Three members of the family, including the father, are charged with killing four members of the family – three sisters and the father’s second wife. Again, we have a man, Mohammad Shafia, putting his own needs first.

In the Penn State case, it would seem that the men did nothing so that they could avoid ruffling the feathers of a popular football team’s leadership, while in the Costa Concordia situation, Schettino feared for his own life and ran for shelter rather than to fulfill his duty as captain. Then, with Shafia, he is so focused on his own “honour” and reputation, he murders his own flesh and blood. Rather than re-examine his own values and do the hard work of bridging a compromise with his daughters, he decided to just make the “problem” go away.

I know there are plenty of honourable men – and women — in our society today. They quietly do hard, brave work every day. But the spate of recent media stories has really had me feeling sick to my stomach.

After making my first visit to the largest Ikea in Canada, I find this rather perplexing since I would much rather shop at my local Walmart than my new, huge, local Ikea, that’s for sure. Perhaps it’s that Ikea, with its design aesthetic and clever ads, is just more trendy and easier to like? More, how shall we say … yuppie.

I’m sure there are lots of sophisticated reasons for hating Walmart more than Ikea, but really, I think we’ve all probably been too gentle on our Swedish friend. Both pay their employees low wages, both have a significant impact on landscape due to the sheer size of their stores, both list China as a major supplier, and both encourage mass consumption.

But let’s put aside the “big perspective,” for a moment and let me rant, as an individual, about how irksome my recent shopping experience was at Ikea.

1. Reserved Parking for Hybrid Vehicles: As I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed a whole bunch of available parking spots right near the front. I assumed these spots were reserved for drivers with disabilities. But nooooo … these were for hybrid vehicles. Ha! Who does Ikea think its target market really is? The people shopping at Ikea are driving in from the suburbs in their mini-vans and SUVs or hitching a ride with their roommate in a beat-up second-hand car. Silly Ikea. Those hybrid car owners are strolling about their local, gentrified neighbourhood boutiques. So, there they sat — all these prime parking spots — empty.

2. No Windows: Enclosed spaces are not for humans. They might be necessary for transporting humans — like elevators or airplanes — but they are generally unpleasant. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be building codes for bedrooms to have windows, or office designs built around windows. Windows are pleasant. There are no windows where the products are in Ikea stores. It’s the same premise that casinos use, which helps people lose track of time and spend more money. Ikea’s funneling system (see #3) seems to magnify the effect that no windows has upon me.

3. The Lab Rat Syndrome: All Ikeas are built to push consumers past every single one of their wares. It is a single funnel that you are extruded through like an object or animal …. or, well, worse. The smaller Ikea we had in Ottawa did this of course, but its scale was so much smaller that it was merely irksome. On this more massive, larger scale? We moved between feeling like cattle being prodded through to the slaughterhouse to lab rats being observed from up high as we muddled through a maze. It felt uncomfortable. Too controlled. I had to fight an overwhelming sensation to run madly screaming, “Help! Where’s the exit?!”

4. Enviro-Cool: It seems that Ikea has jumped on the enviro-cool wagon. I’m all for enviro-friendly, but enviro-cool is just grating. Take the hybrid parking noted above. This is touted as one of their many eco-friendly features. But who are they kidding? All Ikea furniture is destined for the landfill — it cannot be passed down from generation to generation, heck, it can’t even be used second-hand because it won’t last long enough for that! Another stat used in virtually every press release and blog post that I read noted that this Ottawa Ikea store was 40% more efficient than its last store. Sure, that’s great … but if it really wanted to be enviro-friendly, it wouldn’t be the 18 times larger than the arena at ScotiaBank Place! The size is just crazy big. Too big, in fact, to be enjoyable (see #3).

Photography credit: Julie Oliver, Ottawa Citizen.

5. The Ottawa Sky-Line: Anyone who has recently driven eastward from Kanata on the Queensway on the way home from work has wondered: “Huh? What is that large light?” Only to find that it is the new, huge electronic billboard on the side of the Ikea building. Change to the horizon and our day-to-day landscape is inevitable, but this one is so ugly that it’s hard not to feel a little put out by it.

So there we have it: why I did not enjoy shopping in the new and “improved” Ottawa Ikea. In this case, I didn’t find bigger to be better. You? Love or hate, share your tales in the comments below.

But I heard him. And I thought he was wrong. That he was transposing his own experience as a young gay man in the 1980s to that of today’s teenagers. That today’s youth have it so much better. That the world is so much more aware, more accepting, and less closeted.

After all, when I grew up in the 1980s, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there was not a single gay person in the entire high school. (Which, of course there were. These young people were not just in the closet, they were forced there and kept behind doors with lock and key.) Whereas when my younger siblings were in high school a decade later, there were openly gay students and an LGBT group that regularly met at school.

And the theatre piece we’d just seen, the Tony-award winning play The Normal Heart, was about a time even before mine. It told of a tight-knit group of friends working to refuse to let doctors, politicians and the press bury the truth of the then unspoken AIDS epidemic, more than a quarter of a century ago.

This man was speaking to his friend, an older woman, and he was seething. He said, “Things haven’t changed. After all this, after everything we’ve been through, things still haven’t changed.”

I hadn’t really thought about this man since I saw that performance, many months ago. But today, I have. And I’ve been thinking that he’s right.

How else can we explain the death of Jamie Hubley, a 15-year-old Canadian boy who lived in my city, and who committed suicide after public taunting at school for being gay and unsuccessful treatment for depression? It seems that “difference” is still not considered “normal.”

Of course, even in my school days, difference was taunted. Whether it was the colour of your skin, the way you talked, the freckles on your face, or the clothes you wore, if you were different, you could get eaten alive at school. Conformity was everywhere. It protected you, kept you under the radar. I blended in. I got along okay. But I remember the others who didn’t. It wasn’t pretty. Like Rick Mercer says in this video, school was a prison for these kids.

But why are children in groups so vicious? And what makes us this way? It seems that bullying has existed in school since the beginning of time. Literature from all time periods notes this kind of behaviour among children.

How can we consider ourselves evolved as a species when our young people are tearing each other apart like animals? Think I’m exaggerating? Jamie Hubley had batteries stuffed down his throat by a gang of fellow students who didn’t like his choice to figure skate rather than play hockey. How does this make any sense? What does it matter to them what type of skating he wants to do.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’m raising more questions than answers. When am I going to wrap this up with a nice closing and some calls for action that will make a difference?

But I can’t. I’m now that man outside the theatre, seething with frustration, with tears in my eyes. How can we make sure that there are no more families like the Hubleys, left only with questions rather than their much-loved child.

There’s no such things as normal hearts. Just hearts. And they all hurt just the same when they’re clawed at.

Like most women my age, I have friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances who’ve had to face this diagnosis and live through it the best way they can. Some have been more fortunate than others. And I am so grateful for those who still stand beside me and have been able to resume a life a of mothering, and working, and living all that regular life entails when you are not sick.

I also know it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month because my email box tied to this blog is filling up with “pitches” for me to help raise awareness. But it’s not a request to create awareness around how to do a self breast-exam, or how research dollars are making a difference, or even how fundraising dollars are helping women of low-income families to receive treatments in countries that don’t have socialized health care. These pitches are to raise awareness about the company’s particular cause marketing campaign related to Breast Cancer Awareness Month — i.e. we have a pink-coloured product, that when purchased will result in a donation of $X to X charity.

When I receive charitable requests, I always consider them. They certainly pull my strings more than any other kind of request. But in reading a few of these, I didn’t quite feel “right.”

What’s wrong with pink marketing?

In theory, if I needed to buy a particular product and it also happened to result in a donation if I buy the product, it’s a win-win, right? But the more products that are turning pink, the more I start to think that this must be a profitable endeavour. Just like selling a “green-ified” product is au courant, so it seems is the “pink-ified” product.

Yet, we all know that not all “green” products are actually doing much for the environment. Rather the term “green” is simply a way to help sell more product. Thus the term “green-washing.” And, in turn, a new term “pink-washing” is being used by a number of organizations.

Breast Cancer Action, in particular, is a strong voice on this issue of “pink-washing.” This organization has produced a list of critical questions to ask yourself before buying pink. These five questions are:

• 1. How much money from your purchase actually goes towards breast cancer?
• 2. What is the maximum amount that will be donated?
• 3. How are the funds being raised?
• 4. To what breast cancer organization does the money go, and what types of programs does it support?
• 5. What is the company doing to assure that its products are not actually contributing to the breast cancer epidemic?

To learn more about the rationale and concerns that lay behind these questions, click over to the Think Before You Pink site. While I cannot refute the fact that pink marketing has raises millions of dollars over the years, I still think these questions are important to ask before pulling out your wallet.

Of particular interest to me is the connection that the author, George F. Will, makes between North Americans’ waistline and individual self-control. Sure, it sounds obvious … if you can enact self-control over what you put into your body, then you don’t become obese. But in a country where there is just SO MUCH abundance, one needs to use an insane amount of self-control each and every day. From, as Mike Goad pointed out in the comments section, the constant advertisements in the media to eat-eat-eat to the easy credit urging you to buy-buy-buy, to the lack of anticipation that Javamom notes and which this article links to the appearance of microwaves in the kitchen.

The oven is emblematic of the plummeting effort required per calorie ingested. One estimate is that Americans’ per capita caloric intake has increased 22% since 1980, and the number of diabetics has more than quadrupled.

Microwaves, processed foods and drive-thru dining … food is all around us and so easy to consume. And even when you’re not burning a single calorie as you sit on the couch, your television will call out to you to dial-in some pizza or gobble down some chocolate and ice cream. It would seem, then, that someone in North America’s level of self-control has to be much grander in scale than someone living in an environment where food and water is scarce.

But how many times can we say “no” and do the right thing and resist? Most of us cave — at least here and there. And here’s why, posits Will’s article: self-control is like a muscle and like any muscle, it gets fatigued. In fact, the article concludes with this:

Did you tell lots of people — did you blog about — your New Year’s resolutions? Akst [author of the book We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess] knows why you didn’t: “self-control fatigue,” which is as American as microwaved apple pie.

But, silly me, I did blog about my new year’s resolutions ….

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Here’s a quick check-in on my personal resolutions for 2011 (which I detailed here).

#1:  Make time for girlfriend time

I have two girlfriends in particular (Kathryn and Girlie M — are your ears ringing??) who I’ve been wanting and meaning and planning to get together with since well before Christmas. But we haven’t managed it yet. So, with them, I have failed. But I did get in a last minute date with Trish to see the film The Black Swan and it was a fantastic film with fantastic company. Also, my girlfriend Jacquie is always a phone call away and has, thankfully, joined me again for Boot Camp.

#2: Get fit and stay fit

Yes, I started up Boot Camp again last night. I feared that all the insane overindulgence of Christmas feasts over the holidays would land me back to my starting point … but happily, no. My body seems to have rebounded nicely to the exercise again. And, I actually think it’s much happier when I force it to sweat than when I simply wrap it up in flannel and feed it red wine. Strange.

#3: Learn to enjoy winter

Nothing to say here … moving along ….

#4: Say “yes” more

Well, er, let’s just say I was invited to go cross-country skiing and skating at least three times and “yes” was not the answer (refer back to #3).

#5: Give myself the gift of anticipation

I am thrilled to say that I am really, really anticipating a big trip now! I am going to South Korea for one week in February. Not only will I have the natural anticipation of getting to see (and hug!) my sister Megs again, who has been living in Seoul for two years now, but I’m going to pick up some books to learn more about the culture and really ramp up the anticipation even higher. Woohoo!

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So, did you end up making any resolutions this year? How’s it going so far?

Your comments on my post have been particularly insightful and have given me lots of food for thought (pardon the pun!). Many of you, like Ads, agreed that the obesity epidemic, while certainly a problem worth tackling, does need to be put into perspective. Krista, who lives on the African continent and knows first hand the struggles to get basics such as food, water and electricity to her home, noted how North America is undertaking “consumption to the point of destruction.” I cannot agree more wholeheartedly.

And both Krista and Meg rightly pointed out that this kind of overconsumption does affect the rest of the world — from the environment and availability of resources to the “force-feeding” of our junk into third world nations – and so it is important to talk about it and, by extension, try to do something about it.

But when I think about this … which I do a lot …. I can get overwhelmed. Where to start? And can my small actions actually make a difference when the issue is so systemic? Well, we’ve got to start somewhere, right? And where better than in our own homes and with our own buying power.

So I thought I could use this blog to raise and discuss some of this. However, I need your help. I’ve got a couple of ideas brewing for posts, but I want to know what things irk you about our over-consuming nature? Tell me (either in the comments or by emailing me directly) and together we can look at those things and dig a little deeper into them.

As always, thanks for being here and chatting with me. Your coffee pal, Julie

I had a few dissenters in my comments (which I love – thank you for sharing your views!) on that post and it made me question why exactly it feels wrong … Is it because I don’t want to acknowledge the issue? Or perhaps I am embarrassed about crunching the numbers and realizing that this “obese” category  being discussed is actually a category into which I fall?

I’ve decided that it is indeed because I am embarrassed. And here’s why:

• 33.4 million people live with HIV/AIDS worldwide, the vast majority of whom are in low- and middle-income countries. An estimated 2.7 million people were newly infected with the virus in 2008 (source: WHO).
• 1.5 million children under the age of five die each year from unsafe water and poor sanitation. That is more than 4,100 deaths per day (source: WaterCan).
• Diarrhoea is the second leading cause of death among children under five globally. Nearly one in five child deaths – about 1.5 million each year – is due to diarrhoea. Today, only 39 per cent of children with diarrhoea in developing countries receive the recommended treatment, and limited trend data suggest that there has been little progress since 2000 (source: UNICEF/WHO).
• In 2008, malaria caused nearly one million deaths, mostly among African children. Malaria is preventable and curable (source: WHO). 
• In 2010, the number of children worldwide who have lost one or both parents to AIDS is expected to reach 25 million – equivalent to the number of people living in New York, Paris, and Bangkok combined. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, over 15 million children have been orphaned by the pandemic (source: World AIDS Orphans Day).

I sit back and imagine … if I lived in a community facing one of the above epidemics, how would I feel about reading a headline from Canada about an “obesity epidemic”? I can’t answer this question, since I’ll never know how it feels to face such life-threatening and difficult life circumstances. But I can tell you that if I was sitting beside this same person who was reading that headline, I’d definitely be embarrassed. Shamefaced, actually.

If you believe the headlines, Canada is in the middle of a serious epidemic. One of such enormous proportions that 1 in 4 Canadians is already affected – and the number is rising!

*yawn*

Yeah, that’s right, I’m tired of hearing about our so-called “obesity epidemic.” From public service announcements, to newspaper headlines to CBC’s latest “Live Right Now” series … please! Sure, we might be a little heavier than the generation before us, but is it really an epidemic – a word associated with the rampant spread of disease?

If 1 in 4 Canadians is now obese – and weren’t just a generation ago – wouldn’t that mean that 1 in 4 of us could no longer sit in an airplane seat? That all of our cars would need to be built with larger seats? That king-sized mattresses would make queen-sized mattresses obsolete? Or worse, that 1 in 4 of us is suffering from illnesses linked to obesity?

I would think that if one out of every four people in my community was obese, I’d see a whole lot of very large people waddling about my neighborhood. But I don’t. I just see the same old mix of people I’ve always seen.  

And the same thing goes for children. We hear so much about how this ”obesity epidemic” is impacting our children the hardest. But where are all these poor children because when I look at the class photos of the children I know, I see maybe one or two slightly larger children in each class. But this has existed since the beginning of time – there’s always a few bigger kids, a few smaller kids and a bunch in the middle. Wasn’t it like that when you were a kid too?

So what does “obese” really mean anyhow? I’ll tell you what it means. It means anyone who scores a BMI of higher than 30. Which is me. Yep, by the BMI, I am obese.

But I would never refer to myself as obese. Sure I’m no bikini model, but by medical standards, I am perfectly healthy: blood pressure, glucose levels, cholesterol … you name it.

Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s important to try to restrict processed foods, eat junk only on Halloween, and do some physical activity every day. I just don’t think it’s worthy of headline space and the term “epidemic.”

Do you agree that this issue has been blown out of proportion or am I sorely deluded? Tell me!

Before I share it with you though, let’s define osteoporosis. It’s a condition that causes bones to become thin and porous, decreasing bone strength and leading to increased risk of breaking a bone. I’m sure most of us have heard this sort of general definition before. But as I get older, and as my parents get older, the following facts seem to have hit me harder than before.

Here are some facts (source: Osteoporosis Canada):

• 1 in 4 women and at least 1 in 8 men over 50 have osteoporosis.
• Osteoporosis causes 70-90% of 30,000 hip fractures annually.
• Each hip fracture costs the system $21,285 in the 1st year after hospitalization, and $44,156 if the patient is institutionalized.
• 23% of patients who fracture a hip die in less than a year.
• The lifetime risk of hip fracture is greater (1 in 6) than the 1 in 9 lifetime risk of developing breast cancer.

Some tips for reducing the risk (source: Health Canada):

• Calcium: People over the age of 50 need 1200 mg of calcium each day, so make sure you’re getting enough.
• Vitamin D: Calcium is not easily absorbed by the body without vitamin D. If you’re over the age of 50, it’s recommended that you take a daily supplement of 400 IU of vitamin D, in addition to a healthy diet.
• Weight-bearing activity: Bones become stronger with increased activity (which is pretty amazing, really), and it’s recommended daily. Weight-bearing exercises include dancing, walking, hiking and tennis.

How do you know if you have osteoporosis?

Osteoporosis largely goes undiagnosed until it’s too late. Your bones can be losing density without you knowing it and that’s why the condition is sometimes called “the silent thief.” A confirmed diagnosis is possible through a test called Bone Mineral Density test — a safe, painless test apparently.

What can you do if you have osteoporosis?

Unlike when my Nana fell, broke her hip, had to live in care, and died shortly afterwards, there are a number of treatments available today. I’m no expert on them, of course. But if you have any of the risk facts listed here, it’s good to know that you’ve got some options.

So … all this to say that someone emailed me asking if I would help raise awareness for osteoporosis. I really didn’t think I cared about osteoporosis, but maybe I should.

For more information, here are some websites: Health Canada (government), Osteoporosis Canada(non-profit, with government and Caltrate — a calcium supplement – as sponsors), International Osteoporosis Foundation (non-profit, non-government), and the organization that had contacted me in the first place and got me thinking about osteoporosis is On the Go Women (run by a Canadian pharmaceutical company called Novartis).