Floral Avenger

The ultrafeminine theme of the breast-cancer “marketplace” — the prominence, for example, of cosmetics and jewelry — could be understood as a response to the treatments’ disastrous effects on one’s looks. But the infantilizing trope is a little harder to account for, and teddy bears are not its only manifestation. A tote bag distributed to breast cancer patients by the Libby Ross Foundation (through places such as the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center) contains, among other items, a tube of Estee Lauder Perfumed Body Crème, a hot-pink satin pillowcase, an audiotape “Meditation to Help You with Chemotherapy,” a small tin of peppermint pastilles, a set of three small inexpensive rhinestone bracelets, a pink-striped “journal and sketch book,” and — somewhat jarringly — a small box of crayons. Marla Willner, one of the founders of the Libby Ross Foundation, told me that the crayons “go with the journal — for people to express different moods, different thoughts…” though she admitted she has never tried to write with crayons herself. Possibly the idea is that regression to a state of childlike dependency puts one in the best frame of mind with which to endure the prolonged and toxic treatments. Or it may be that, in some versions of the prevailing gender ideology, femininity is by its nature incompatible with full adulthood — a state of arrested development. Certainly men diagnosed with prostate cancer do not receive gifts of Matchbox cars.

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Welcome to Cancerland by Barbara Ehrenreich

I hadn’t read this piece since college, but with all of this Komen-hating flying around, I was compelled to hunt it down. And, it’s still awesome.