March 2014

Avon’s Charity Walk of Shame

Corporate-sponsored charity walks do a disservice to many women. Look what just arrived in my mailbox…a pinkalicious mailer from Avon guilting women into walking on my behalf. “Will you walk? Or will you walk away?” Brilliant way to push our collective guilt/shame button. Thanks Avon!

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Thanks too for perpetuating misinformation about breast cancer for your company’s benefit. That’s awesome! Surely your savvy marketing team knows that the 1 in 8 stat is misleading. If your mission is to educate women about breast health, why perpetuate bad information? Breast Cancer Action considers the 1-in-8 stat one of the Top 10 Breast Cancer Myths. Here’s what BCA says:

“This much-quoted statistic is an individual’s cumulative risk over an 85-year lifetime. It does not mean that at any given point, 1 of every 8 women has breast cancer. Rather, it means that if all women lived to be 85, one in eight would develop the disease sometime during her life.”

Shame on you Avon for using this misleading statistic to scare women into contributing to your cause.