Much Ado About Color

This past week, ladies on facebook were asked to post just one word that would describe the color of their undergarments. This was ostensibly to raise awareness for breast cancer – but there wasn’t a call to action or anything, so people were just left wondering what it was about.It was also supposed to be a ‘secret’ from the men out there, but there are 65 million fb users, keeping a secret from half of them would be quite the feat indeed.There has been backlash, surprisingly. Some said that this was unladylike and offensive. Others were upset that there was no end objective, and therefore a pointless excursion. From my own perspective, here’s what I saw happen. “Breast Cancer” became a trending topic on twitter to explain what was happening on facebook. Komen’s fb page jumped tens of thousands of fans in mere days. People were adding to the one-word color dialog by saying things like ‘I lost mom to bcancer’ or ‘im a survivor!’. Our own Vera Bradley Foundation received many messages on twitter. Did the increased activity result in any donations? I don’t know, I don’t have the inside track to all foundations - but I can tell you this: Millions of people thought about breast cancer, even if for just a moment. Maybe some remembered, maybe some were moved, maybe some decided to participate somehow. Sure it was silly, a crazy fluke thing, not going to change any lives. But it was a fun thing to see so many people talking about this disease without looking at the calendar and seeing OCTOBER on it. :)