Welcome to Pinktober

Turn on an NFL game this month and you're likely to see linebackers sporting pink cleats and gloves. Buy groceries and you'll have your choice of products--from yogurt to mushrooms--in pink packaging. There's a pink KitchenAid "cook for the cure" mixer, pink office supplies, and a Smith & Wesson handgun with a pink grip, all tied to fundraising for breast cancer awareness or research.
Plenty of diseases and conditions have their own awareness campaigns, with dedicated months and colors. But none have been as ubiquitous in recent years as the breast cancer awareness movement, signified by the color pink and focused on the month of October.

Pink products: A KitchenAid mixer, a Jets cap, and a Smith and Wesson 9mm handgun with an awareness ribbon on the barrel
Why have breast cancer awareness messages become so common? The disease is among the most common forms of cancer and kills about 40,000 people a year in the U.S. But why have breast cancer awareness efforts become more prominent than those for heart disease, the leading cause of death for women and men? Or lung cancer, the deadliest cancer for both sexes?
"Pinktober," as some have dubbed this month, evokes strong responses. Some see it as a welcome chance to educate women about a disease that was once rarely discussed, to support survivors and spread what they say are critical messages about screening.
"Almost everyone knows someone or has been touched by the disease in some way," said Anne Morris, executive director of the Connecticut affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a national breast cancer advocacy organization that focuses on education, screening, treatment and research. "If it's not their grandmother, it's their next door neighbor, or someone they grew up with."
Others take a different view, seeing the proliferation of pink items as a way for companies to market to women in an appealing demographic group. Some see the messages associated with the campaigns as driven by industries that benefit from breast cancer screenings, delivering what they consider to be questionable messages about the value of screening while failing to make progress on curing the disease or preventing it in the first place.
"There's a huge industry around breast cancer. Breast cancer is big business," said Laura Nikolaides, director of research for the National Breast Cancer Coalition. "And unfortunately, from our position, all of the awareness and all of the resources that have gone into breast cancer have not gotten us a lot of success."