A critical perspective on the ethics of Pinkwashing

1. Pinkwashing:
Think before you pink.
Jocelyn Jarvis, Cindy Luong, Sean Whelan
COMM 338

4. Pinkwashing:
(pink’-wah-sher) noun.
A company or organization that claims to care about breast
cancer by promoting a pink ribbon product, but at the same
time produces, manufactures and/or sells products that are
linked to the disease.

5. Key Ethical Issues
• Pinkwashing and its hypocrisy
• Manipulating consumers : taking advantage of the kind-
hearted and the uninformed
• Commercialization of the disease

6. Surprising Facts
Not the first time…

7. Think Before You Pink

8. Think Before You Pink
“We make this information available to our
constituents, respecting that they are intelligent
consumers who make informed decisions about the use
of products based on evidence”
- Susan G. Komen Foundation

9. Ethical Framework & Solution
• Integrative Social Contracts Theory
– Moral free space is limited by hypernorms
– Hypernorms which guide consumers purchasing “pink” products
• The right to well being and avoiding unnecessary harm
• Susan G. Komen for the Cure should demand that TPR holdings recall the
original version of the perfume
• Raise its ethical standards and provide a benchmark for other,
smaller foundations dedicated to the same cause

10. Think before you pink.
Thank-you for your time!

11. Discussion Questions
• Has the focus shifted away from breast cancer awareness to
the commercialism and consumerism?
• The “Queen’s wears Pink” campaign could have potentially
been an example of pink noise. Where did the money actually
go?