Enough Already

As a contrast to the gravity of yesterday's post, I have to ask, "What the heck is going on?"

I got an email from a favorite beading place, Fire Mountain Gems, explaining the many different "Awareness Ribbons" - and they gave us a guide. That includes twenty-four different ribbons to help us designate "awareness".

Twenty. Four.

Am I the only one that thinks that's ridiculous? And that's not the end of the silliness. Get a load of this ribbon, "light blue," for instance. There are forty-five potential causes this ribbon can be promoting awareness for from Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) to Water Safety. How would one have any real clue what the ribbon was for just by looking? How does that raise awareness of YOUR topic.

Or this lovely "periwinkle" ribbon that signifies eating disorders, pulmonary hypertension, esophageal or stomach cancer, Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD), and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) or Spastic Colon. Nice combo for a lovely color, but I defy you to tell at a glance whether someone is dealing with eating disorders or stomach cancer. Or tell it apart from the "purple ribbon" (which has sixteen different meanings).

And some of these are just silly. Like this "brown ribbon" that manages to cover both tobacco issues and colorectal cancer. I know it seems perfectly reasonable to have a ribbon that reminds us of excrement but I'm not sure I want to think that when I'm getting dressed in the morning.

Let's not forget the dual use ones, that happen to have two colors, like the "pink/blue" ribbon which is supposed to indicate pregnancy, loss of an infant, SIDS and male breast cancer. Terrific. Don't know whether to congratulate someone or commiserate with her loss. Who thinks up this stuff. Blue/pink? Why not androgeny?

My thought on this is that, with eleventy-five definitions for more than twenty ribbon colors, how do these ribbons tell us anything? Do they even mean anything any more?

Perhaps we need a new hobby.