The idea of using a ribbon to promote a cause or spread a message was first started in 1979. During this year, Americans were being held hostage in Iran, and their families, friends and soon the whole nation tied yellow ribbons around trees to show their support for freeing the hostages and bringing them home.
In the early 1990s, a 68 year old woman by the name of Charlotte Haley used the same concept when her daughter, grandma and sister were all diagnosed with breast cancer. To raise awareness, she began making ribbons in the color of peach and attaching them to cards. These cards contained information about the annual budget of the National Cancer Institute and how only a small portion of this budget was being spent on cancer research and prevention. The card urged people to contact their legislators to make a change in this and to wear the ribbons to raise awareness.
In 1991, Evelyn Lauder of the Estee' Lauder Corporation and Alexandra Penney of Self Magazine were putting together a special insert piece for the October edition of Self magazine to recognize breast cancer awareness month. They heard about the peach ribbons and contacted Haley to determine if they could use them. Haley declined claiming it would make the cause commercialized, and that it would lose its grassroots appeal. However, Lauder and Penney really wanted to use the ribbon concept, so they consulted with their legal departments to see what they could do. The legal departments finally agreed they could use the ribbons as long as they changed the color. They chose pink, and the breast cancer awareness pink ribbon concept has grown from there.
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