- Person
- Evelyn Lauder
- Lived
- 1936–2011
- Field
- Breast cancer advocacy
- From
- Austrian-born American
The story
Evelyn Lauder was born Evelyn Hausner in Vienna in 1936 to a Jewish family that fled the Nazis in 1938 and reached New York in 1940. She married Leonard Lauder in 1959 and rose to senior corporate vice president at Estée Lauder, the cosmetics company founded by his mother. In 1989 she was diagnosed with breast cancer herself, though she rarely spoke about her own case.
She had already noticed how silent the subject was. At an industry meeting in 1988 she learned that about 44,000 American women were dying of breast cancer every year, roughly twice the number then dying of AIDS. AIDS activists were telling their stories and demanding new drugs; women with breast cancer, she said, were dying quietly, with no one to speak for them.
In 1992 Alexandra Penney, editor of SELF magazine, was preparing the magazine’s second annual Breast Cancer Awareness Month issue and wanted a symbol. The year before, a breast cancer survivor named Charlotte Haley had handed out peach-coloured ribbons on cards protesting how little cancer funding went to prevention. Penney and Lauder created a pink ribbon. Lauder then put the reach of Estée Lauder behind it: in October 1992 the company launched its Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign, and women at its cosmetics counters across the United States were given pink ribbons to remind them to have breast examinations. At first some people mistook it for an AIDS ribbon.
The idea spread far beyond one company. By the time of Lauder’s death in 2011, the campaign alone had distributed more than 115 million ribbons around the world, and since 2000 it has lit famous buildings and monuments in pink each October; in 2010 it lit 38 landmarks in 24 hours. The pink ribbon has its critics, who warn against companies that sell pink products while giving little to research. But Lauder tied the ribbon to real money for science, founding the Breast Cancer Research Foundation a year later.
Why it matters
The pink ribbon made breast cancer something women could talk about openly, encouraging millions to seek screening and early diagnosis every October and all year round.
About Evelyn Lauder
Vienna-born refugee who co-created the pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness and founded the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, which has raised more than a billion dollars for research.
More about Evelyn Lauder
Sources
- Pink ribbon Wikipedia
- 12 Facts About Our Founder, Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Cancer Research Foundation
- Gillibrand, Snowe, Feinstein resolution honoring the life and legacy of Evelyn H. Lauder passes U.S. Senate Office of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
- An Interview with Evelyn H. Lauder LEADERS magazine
- Evelyn H. Lauder, Champion of Breast Cancer Research, Dies at 75 (New York Times obituary, reprinted in the Congressional Record) U.S. Government Publishing Office
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.