I’m not normally one to pull out the political correctness yellow flag but it really annoys me when supposedly progressive groups demonstrate a certain level of thoughtlessness when it comes to their assumptions about roles in society.
I got an e-mail this morning from Breast Cancer Action, a well meaning group based in San Francisco, letting me know that they’d made the finals for “National CLASSY Award for ‘Most Effective Awareness Campaign'” for their work on pinkwashing. Pinkwashing, in case you don’t know or don’t live in the U.S., is the use of pink on their labels or the creation of special pink products made available for sale during October, which is breast cancer awareness month in the United States, by companies whose products are linked to an increase risk of breast cancer. This use of pink erroneously implies to the average, harried consumer that the company selling the product is contributing to eliminating breast cancer, or helping breast cancer patients or survivors, in some meaningful way when very often the company is doing nothing but adding a pink ribbon to a product’s label.
Breast Cancer Action is running pretty high profile campaign against KFC and the Susan G. Komen Foundation in reaction to KFC’s “Buckets for the cure” sales of fried chicken in pink buckets on the basis that unhealthy food, like KFC, is a contributing factor to developing breast cancer and that by taking KFC’s money Komen, which runs the largest breast cancer research fund raisers in the country, is allowing KFC to make a profit while giving KFC an undeserved reputation and a lot of profits they wouldn’t normally have.
It’s the media pop on NPR and MSNBC that Breast Cancer Action has gotten from the KFC campaign and a related campaign against Eli Lilly around rBGH that has netted them nomination for the Stay Classy award which comes with $10,000 and will be given to the winning group at a black-tie optional dinner on November 7th in San Diego, CA. But, apparently, you can attend only if your black-tie optional attire conforms strictly go heteronormative gender expectations.
Stay Classy’s “About The Event” page includes very specific instructions for how “guys” and “gals” should dress. Now, I may be making too much of this because I’m tired. I may be making too much of it because I’ve been over thinking lately about what constitutes proper job interview clothes. But it seems to me that if you’re going to reward organizations that “do good” and serve a wide variety of constituents it might be a good idea not to push your assumptions about what constitutes normality onto the rest of the world.
I sort of want to write the Stay Classy people and call them on their bullshit just to see what they say but I suspect that they will come back with an answer akin to “stop being so argumentative” which will really piss me off.
“classy’ is letting other people be COMFORTABLE. It’s knowing clothes don’t make the person. I’d write to the “classy” people too. And say, “Emily Post” barfed on your invite. How class-less can you be?
Clearly – you should never expect me to tell you to “be quite” or “not so argumentative.” I think I might be gasoline to your flame!