It’s October and familiar colours are overtaking the landscape: the unmistakable combination of Halloween orange and black, the vibrant reds and yellows of the changing maple leaves, and gleefully girlie pastel pink… that’s right, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month has returned with a pink vengeance and this year everyone from Pornhub to the NFL is getting involved.
For the entire month of October, Pornhub, a free online community with content uploaded by its members, will donate one penny for every 30 views of their tit-themed videos to supporting breast cancer research in what they’ve deemed the “Save the Boobs” campaign.
Or, as their press release put it:
“It doesn’t matter if you’re into itty-bitty-titties, the perfect handful, jumbo fun-bags or low-swinging flapjacks, what matters most is that your kind and selfless gesture will go a long way towards helping our sisters find a cure”
So far, the breast-themed videos on Pornhub have received over 30 million views, on track with their monthly average of between 70 and 90 million clicks. This adds up to a $10,000 donation, which could triple by the end of the month. This money was supposed to go towards the Susan G. Komen Foundation until the Dallas-based organization came forward last week to reject the offer. “We are not a partner, nor accepting donations, and have asked them to stop using our name,” said Andrea Rader of Komen for the Cure. Pornhub is currently seeking another worthy recipient for the funds.
It doesn’t surprise me that money raised for breast cancer from a porn website has become controversial, as pink ribbon marketing campaigns all over the place have come under recent scrutiny by websites like Think Before You Pink. They critique the use of the pink ribbon as a marketing tool, as it not only gets used to sell a product but to sell “good” along with it.
A new NFB documentary titled ‘Pink Ribbons, Inc’ remarked that since 1940, a woman’s chances of developing breast cancer went from one in 22 to one in 8. Even though it ultimately kills fewer women then cardiac disease or lung cancer, its high profile, links to motherhood and underlying current of sexuality have led breast cancer and the pink ribbon campaign to near-ubiquity. With women making the majority of household purchases, it only makes sense from a marketing standpoint to slap it on just about anything, even products that might be harmful and increase women’s chances of developing the disease.
Ultimately, my feelings on Pornhub’s fundraising campaign are a little conflicted. First of all, I wouldn’t exactly put “watching pornography” among the most kind and selfless acts a person can perform. Plus I’m not so sure that using terms like “fun-bags” prove progressive thinking on a company’s part. But, it is pretty much free money – people are going to watch porn anyways, so why not have some good come out of it? I applaud their effort to try to help out, as chances are quite high that many of the men and women in the videos on Pornhub has a personal connection to breast cancer, whether through their mother, grandmother, aunt, sister or friend. At least they’re not trying to suck money out of their fans, while putting on a show of support for breast cancer, like some believe the NFL is doing with their pink philanthropic gestures of late.
In addition to raising awareness with pink jerseys and giant ribbons painted on the fields, the NFL is donating 5% of the sales of all pink ribbon merchandise to the American Cancer Society… which at first sounds decent, but if you break it down like Jezebel did, with a nod to Business Insider: “if NFL products are sold at a 100% markup and only 5% of sale proceeds go to the American Cancer Society, then the NFL is pocketing 90% of sales of Breast Cancer Awareness products, many of which would not be purchased if they didn’t come with a promise that consumers were ‘helping’.”
Furthermore, the league made an astonishing $8.5 billion in 2009 alone. And guess how much they’re given to the American Cancer Society since the creation of the fundraising program four years ago: a measly $3 million. But I guess every little penny counts…
Pink Ribbon Collage Photo Credit: http://thinkbeforeyoupink.org/?p=2125#more-2125
