I have always been an analytical person, though I may have ever known it, until recently. I have always needed to know the when, how, and whys. When we started planning our breast cancer awareness at Serenity Spa, I started to wonder why it was denoted by the color Pink. So I did some research, as I usually do, when I don’t know the answer to a question.
The idea of a ribbon symbolizing a certain
idea or organization began with two phases. The first being when “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 ribbon, Americans were told on the nightly news,
signaled her desire to see her husband home again. For the first time, ribbon
became medium, ribbon became message. Yellow ribbons sprouted up across the
country in solidarity. That was step one.”
The
second phase didn’t spring up until eleven 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.”
Suddenly
ribbons were used to symbolize every charitable cause. The New York Times declared 1992, “The Year
of the Ribbon.” These events paved the way for Breast Cancer Awareness’ pink
ribbon.
Susan
G. Komen’s Race for a Cure initially began handing out pink ribbons for their
New York race in late 1990, but this event was not necessarily the one that
caused the “pink ribbon” to break out.
With
the combined efforts of Alexandra Penney, then the editor in chief of Self and
Evelyn Lauder—Estée Lauder senior corporate vice president and a breast cancer
survivor, they made history. In early
1992, Self had their extraordinarily successful Breast Cancer Awareness Magazine
and Estee Lauder created their cosmetic collection line with Pink Ribbons.
Though
it was not an easy path to decide on the color pink because of “68-year-old Charlotte Haley, the
granddaughter, sister, and mother of women who had battled breast cancer. Her
peach-colored loops were handmade in her dining room. 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. Help us wake up our
legislators and America by wearing this ribbon.” The color peach depicted
her cause.
Though
Self did make the attempt to contact Mrs. Haley, she did not want to have
anything to do with Self Magazine stating, “[Self] was too commercial.”
Once
they determined that pink was going to be their symbolic color, they were very
satisfied with the response that they received.
“Pink is the
quintessential female color,” says Margaret Welch, director of the Color
Association of the United States. “The profile on pink is playful, life-affirming.
We have studies as to its calming effect, its quieting effect, its lessening of
stress. [Pastel pink] is a shade known to be health-giving; that’s why we have
expressions like ‘in the pink.’ You can’t say a bad thing about it.” Pink is,
in other words, everything cancer notably is not.
With
the release of their Pink Ribbon Collection, Estée Lauder “collected over
200,000 pink ribbon petitions urging the White House to push for increased
funding for research.”
The
rest is history from pink shirts to pink hair, pink has become the known color
for Breast Cancer Awareness. So think
pink! Be aware! Contribute to the cause!
Bibliography
For
more information regarding Breast Cancer Awareness, please visit the sites
below.
