I’m sure everyone knows that October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. If not you’ve been hiding under a pink rock somewhere. Breast cancer awareness is a cause near and dear to my heart. My mother lost her fight with cancer when I was only 19 and my older sister is now a three year survivor.

October was officially declared Breast Cancer Awareness month in 1985 when The American Cancer Society and a division of what is now AstraZeneca got together to promote mammography as the most effective weapon to fight against breast cancer. The pink ribbon was added as a symbol for Breast Cancer by Estee Lauder and The Susan Komen foundation in the early 90’s.
Even though we are heading to the end of October there are still things you can do to show your support for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The first and easiest thing I want to mention is:

The Breast Cancer Site for the Greater good. Just go to the website and click the “click here” tab and The Greater Good donates money towards paying for mammograms for women who can’t afforded them. It’s not a lot of money but every click counts. They also sell Breast Cancer Awareness items. If you buy an item from the site they donate even more money. So, if you don’t do anything else this month, at least click on that site and help fund a mammogram. Another really easy thing you can do to show your support is turn you facebook picture pink or add a pink tag to it. There are a gazillion apps to do that. I like pizap.blog, it’s user friendly and you can do both of those things on that site.

Now with all that serious stuff dealt with let’s talk about some fun things you can do to show your support for Breast Cancer Awareness. The local beauty school in my area offered “pink” services for free for a week. The services included, pink nails, pink hair and pink eyeshadow. I had my hair dyed pink. It’s not the kind that washes out either so I have had a lot of fun with it this month.

I’ve seen some really cute T-shirts too, with sayings such as “save the tata’s”, “save second base”, “real men wear pink” and “go pink or go home”. My sister who had to have reconstructive surgery has one that says “Yes, they’re fake. My real ones tried to kill me!”

I know in a lot of cities tattoo shops are offering free pink ribbon tattoos. That might be my goal for next year.

I’m sure you have noticed NFL and other sports have come out with there own version of pink ribbon gear. So everyone is jumping on the pink band wagon.

If you can’t figure out anything else to do, go to the store, buy a roll of pink ribbon and a box of straight pins and stand on the street corner and give out your own pink ribbons. What ever you do have fun and remember self exams and mammograms are the reason for THIS season.