From Pink to Green: Disease Prevention and the Environmental Breast Cancer Movement

Chapter 1: A Movement in the Making

While shopping at a San Francisco bookstore in November 2000, I decided to purchase a postcard created by Susan Liroff of Spitfire Graphics, in Oakland, California. On the front of the postcard was a color photo of a topless white woman with short blond hair. A horizontal scar filled the space on her chest where her right breast used to be. With one hand on her hip, she used her other hand to hold a sign that read, “INVISIBILITY EQUALS DEATH.” A chronology of the increasing rates of breast cancer incidence filled the space above the woman’s head: “1964—1 in 20; 1980—1 in 14; 1994—1 in 8.” The text to the left of her sign read, “Since 1971, more than 1 trillion dollars have been spent on cancer research and treatment.” The back of the postcard contained the rest of the organization’s message: “Breast Cancer is the number one killer of women between the ages of 35 and 50. The cancer industry continues to ignore the link between epidemic cancer rates and the contamination of air, food and water. We demand that our lives be valued over financial profit and that adequate health care be available to all!”1 When I took the postcard to the counter, the cashier—a white man in his late twenties—picked it up and paused, looking at both sides. Then he placed it on the counter and said, “I can’t charge you for this. This is for breast cancer. There shouldn’t be a charge for this.” Receiving the postcard for free left me feeling pleasantly surprised, yet it also spoke to the powerful resonance of breast cancer and the political culture surrounding it in contemporary American life. Liroff’s postcard focuses on a small but increasingly influential facet of this political culture: the environmental breast cancer movement. A Movement in the Making Chapter 1 1 In one sense, the postcard reflects social and political themes that are as central to the U.S. environmental breast cancer movement today as they were in 1994 when Raven Light, the postcard’s model, boldly showed her mastectomized body. The postcard highlights activists’ concerns about the overall increase in breast cancer incidence rates over the past thirty (now forty) years and the failure of the nation’s “War on Cancer” to halt this growing problem through predominantly biomedical research and interventions. It also condemns the cancer industry for deflecting attention away from what activists view as the solution to the breast cancer problem—disease prevention, especially the reduction of everyday toxic exposures. Additionally, the postcard embodies the feminist and lesbian activist roots of environmental breast cancer activism by demanding that more attention be paid to a disease that primarily affects women, as well as by depicting a woman defying cultural standards of femininity with her short hair, cosmetic-free face, and publicly displayed mastectomy . The fact that a queer bookstore sold the postcard further highlights these sociopolitical roots. Finally, the postcard reflects—perhaps unintentionally —how the environmental breast cancer movement is structured in many ways by the social, political, and public health concerns of white women. Yet much has changed since 1994. A growing number of not only breast cancer organizations but also women’s health, environmental justice, environmental 2 From Pink to Green Figure 1.1 A postcard of activist and breast cancer survivor Raven Light created by Susan Liroff in 1994. Courtesy of Susan Liroff (Spitfire Graphics) and Raven Light. health, and public health groups advocate for increased attention to suspected environmental causes of breast cancer. Activists extend their political and economic critiques of the cancer industry to other forms of corporate power and cultural practices that deflect attention from such causes and from breast cancer prevention more generally. They regularly push for scientific research and policy reform as part of their prevention efforts. They also embrace a particular theory of disease causation—endocrine disrupter theory—that shapes the movement’s social, cultural, political, and scientific landscape in compelling ways. With its focus on toxic exposures, the environmental breast cancer movement seeks to transform the dominant paradigm for addressing the breast cancer problem. The “future imaginaries” that guide these efforts, however, not only provide a new vision for public health, biomedicine, science, and environmental policy.2 They also require a new vision for social, cultural, political, and...