To the editor:

It’s October, breast cancer awareness month. I’d like to take the opportunity to invite women to question the annual onslaught of pink, which (although it’s nobody’s bad intentions) urges consumerism of pink-themed products, while trivializing the epidemic of breast cancer, its environmental causes and the suffering of its victims.

Raising awareness about breast cancer is undoubtedly a good idea. But here women would do well to follow the lead of AIDS activists who fought valiantly for funding and gave us the AIDS quilt and “Angels in America,” not teddy bears, pink ribbons and, here in Lawrence Kansas, bras tied together and strung across the Kansas River bridge.

As a friend pondered, “What would be strung across the bridge to raise awareness of prostate cancer in men?”