There are many choices to be made after you decide “pink ribbon.” According to C.M. We asked our lawyers and they said, ‘ Come up with another color.” “We didn’t want to crowd her,” Penney says. She reported that Estee Lauder had experienced “problems” trying to work with Haley, and quoted the activist claiming that Self had asked her to relinquish the concept of the ribbon. Said we were too commercial.”Īt the end of September 1992, Liz Smith printed a follow-up to Haley’s story. Even five years later, her voice still sounds startled by Haley’s answer. “We said, ‘We want to go in with you on this, we’ll give you national attention, there’s nothing in it for us,” Penney says. By the time Liz Smith printed her phone number, Haley had distributed thousands. Haley was strictly grassroots, handing the cards out at the local supermarket and writing prominent women, everyone from former First Ladies to Dear Abby. Help us wake up our legislators and America by wearing this ribbon.” Each set of five came with a card saying: “The National Cancer Institute annual budget is $1.8 billion, only 5 percent goes for cancer prevention. Her peach-colored loops were handmade in her dining room. “A week later Liz Smith wrote about a woman who was already doing a peach-colored ribbon for breast cancer.” The woman was 68-year-old Charlotte Haley, the granddaughter, sister, and mother of women who had battled breast cancer. “You know how it is when things are in the air,” Penney says. Penney recalls the birth of the ribbon now from her office at Ziff-Davis. Evelyn Lauder went her one better: She promised to put the ribbon on cosmetics counters across the country. Then Penney had a flash of inspiration-she would create a ribbon, and enlist the cosmetics giant to distribute it in New York City stores. The question was, how to do it again and even better. The previous year’s effort, inspired and guest edited by Evelyn Lauder-Estée Lauder senior corporate vice president and a breast cancer survivor-had been a huge hit. Early in 1992, Alexandra Penney, then the editor in chief of Self, was busy designing the magazine’s second annual Breast Cancer Awareness Month issue. To really break out, the pink ribbon would need a situation in which the ribbon was the event.Īnd it didn’t take long for that situation to arrive. This first use of the ribbon, though, was for Komen just a detail in the larger and more important story of the race. In fall 1991, mere months after Irons’ electrifying appearance, the foundation gave out pink ribbons to every participant in its New York City race. Komen had been handing out bright pink visors to breast cancer survivors running in its Race for the Cure since late 1990. The stage was set for the evolution of the breast cancer ribbon.įirst on the scene was the Susan G. After just a short time, they were so ubiquitous that The New York Times declared 1992 “The Year of the Ribbon.” Overnight, every charitable cause had to have one. Step two occurred 11 years later, when AIDS activists looked at the yellow ribbons that had been resurrected for soldiers fighting the Gulf War and said, “What about something for our boys dying here at home?” The activist art group Visual AIDS turned the ribbon bright red-“because it’s the color of passion”-looped it, spruced it up and sent it onto the national stage during the Tony awards, photogenically pinned to the chest of actor Jeremy Irons. Yellow ribbons sprouted up across the country in solidarity. For the first time, ribbon became medium, ribbon became message. The ribbon, Americans were told on the nightly news, signaled her desire to see her husband home again. The first occurred in 1979, the year that Penney Laingen, wife of a hostage who’d been taken in Iran, was inspired by song to tie yellow ribbons around the trees in her front yard. The merging of the ribbon and symbolism in this country came about in two huge leaps. Where did the ribbon come from, where is it going, and what has it meant along the way? But to much of the media and the world at large, the ribbon is the breast cancer movement. Today, some members of the movement wear it proudly, giving thanks for both the symbol and its attendant charity-dollar largesse. Help us wake up our legislators and America by wearing this ribbon.”… Then Self magazine called.įrom the beginning, the pink ribbon connoting breast cancer awareness has been embroiled in controversy. The woman was 68-year-old Charlotte Haley, the granddaughter, sister, and mother of women who had battled breast cancer.
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