Breast Cancer Awareness Month kicked off Saturday, and with it, 31 days of pink. Since 1991, when Evelyn Lauder’s Breast Cancer Research Foundation partnered with Self magazine, the color has become the all-but-official symbol of the disease. Pink signals “awareness”: solidarity with breast cancer victims, hope for survivors, and encouragement to be screened early and often.

Increasingly, it also means shopping. Brands from Avon to Yoplait are marketing limited-run pink products and pledging a portion of October sales to nonprofit research groups. And from October 17 to 30, a group of 75 boutiques on Madison Avenue is donating 10% of sales of selected pink items to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Mount Sinai Hospital’s Breast Health Resource Program.

It seems like everyone wins. Nonprofits receive donations from people who might not write a check on their own. Corporations sell products (and bask in the glow of generosity). And consumers enjoy the warm, fuzzy spot where shopping and charity meet.

Indeed, corporate tie-ins have succeeded in raising money. The Susan G. Komen Foundation is one of several large organizations that benefits from such arrangements. Last year, more than $37 million of its $132 million in fund-raising efforts came from business partnerships and support. The group’s manager of cause marketing, Caroline Wall, said that product tie-ins corral donations from consumers who might not write a check directly to the cause.

“It’s important to reach people who we might not be coming into contact with,” she said. “We reach more people through this than by some of our other everyday activities.”

But shopping for a cause doesn’t sit well with everyone. Critics include Breast Cancer Action, a San Francisco grassroots organization that focuses on prevention and searching for environmental carcinogens. “Breast cancer is the darling of cause marketing,” BCA’s communications officer, Rebecca Farmer, said.

The organization’s October Think Before You Pink campaign asks consumers to be aware of how much money from pink-ribbon products goes to the cause, how much is spent on marketing, and how the committed companies behave the other 11 months of the year.

BCA’s campaign, however, has to contend with the number of pink products that seems to grow larger and larger each year. This fall, offerings include collectible figures, angel ornaments, lotions, jeans and denim jackets with embroidered pink ribbons, headbands, diamond-encrusted watches, wallets with cut-out hearts, bedazzled high heels, candles, lipstick, compact mirrors, teddy bears, cookbooks, and a bevy of charm bracelets and beaded necklaces.

“Most of the products are very feminine, or stereotypically feminine,” Ms. Farmer said. “It’s sort of an infantilizing of a disease, which you don’t see with any other adult disease that I can think of. They’re not giving grown men stuffed animals for triple bypass surgery.”

And her group is not alone in raising a skeptical eyebrow to what she calls the “parade of pink.” Barbara Ehrenreich, in a 2001 essay in Harper’s magazine, wrote about her frustration with the sticky-sweet culture of breast cancer support after her diagnosis. “‘Awareness’ beats secrecy and stigma of course,” she wrote, “but I can’t help noticing that the existential space in a which a friend has earnestly advised me to ‘confront [my] mortality’ bears a striking resemblance to the mall.”

Not only that, there is competition among cause-marketing efforts, which can dilute other awareness campaigns. October is also Healthy Lung Month, but so far that designation hasn’t taken such a universal hold. “There are lots of good causes, and we’re all out there trying to get out there,” the president and CEO of the American Lung Association of New York State, Stanton Hudson, said. “Breast cancer month is also October, and they have an incredible amount of press.”

Breast cancer is unfortunately so common – one in eight American women will develop the disease – that most people know someone who’s been afflicted. That makes it an easy choice for designers and executives who want to connect with consumers’ sentimental sides.

“It creates some emotion around the brand,” the president of Rado Switzerland, Caroline Faivet, said of the company’s efforts.

Rado is donating 10% of the proceeds through at least October 2006 from its new Sintra Jubile Pink watch to the Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. The pink timepiece is the basis for the company’s marketing platform through the end of this year. Rado’s contribution is likely to be significant: The watch retails for between $3,500 and $9,900, depending on the number of diamonds. Ms. Faivet expects to write at least a six figure check at the end of the campaign.

But it is important to look at the details of the deals. In some cases, consumers may be doing more for a brand than for cancer research. Ms. Farmer points to Yoplait’s Save Lids to Save Lives campaign, in which the company donates a sum for each used yogurt top a consumer mails back.

“A woman who wants to participate in Yoplait’s campaign may say, ‘I’ve done my part for breast cancer,’ and may not contribute to another cause,” Ms. Farmer said. “What she may not know is that for every clean lid, they donate 10 cents. If you eat three yogurts, you still haven’t covered the cost of the stamps.”

Unless you consume large quantities of yogurt, wouldn’t it be more efficient to write a check, even a small one? The bigger picture looks more generous. Yoplait, a division of General Mills, has pledged a guaranteed minimum donation of $500,000 – and its goal is to raise a total of $1.5 million through the yogurt tops campaign. If it meets this goal, General Mills and its foundation will have raised $15.5 million for the cause over the last eight years.

Other brands promise less. Tommy Hilfiger, for example, will donate $1 from each bottle of True Star eau de toilette spray to breast cancer research – but only up to $4,000.

Of the companies not donating a dollar amount, most pledge a certain percentage of a specific product’s proceeds during a limited time period. Luxe Jewels donates 10% of profits from its online Think Pink Boutique to the Komen Foundation. Lazuli Jewelry gives half of the proceeds from a $60 necklace to the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s Fashion Targets Breast Cancer program. Glass manufacturer Orrefors gives 10% of the proceeds from the $50 Pink Ribbon Angel Ornament to the Komen Foundation. Over the course of four days this month, Saks Fifth Avenue will donate 2% of sales – up to $1 million – to the Women’s Cancer Research Fund.

To be sure, these efforts add up. A small donation is better than nothing, and “awareness” (however vague the term) is better than ignorance. If you look good in pink, wear it from hat to heels. But ultimately, the best way to help is to get out the checkbook – and pick up the phone.