Spendstrong
Why charity bracelets confuse the issues
BY Karen Darricades
Illustration by Rob Elliott/Swizzle
Wristbands, those technicoloured trend items, seem to be everywhere you look lately—but is the message being spread one of compassion or consumerism? Plastic charity bracelets, popularized by Lance Armstrong’s enormously successful Livestrong campaign, have exploded onto the world’s wrists, coming in every conceivable colour, symbolizing support for every conceivable cause.
Since the original yellow bands were let loose in May 2004 to raise funds to support cancer survivors, the Lance Armstrong Foundation has sold 56 million of these $1 bands, and still sells them at a rate of 500,000 to one million a week.
Now, literally hundreds of campaigns—some more noble than others—have hopped on the rainbow bandwagon. And in many cases these campaigns have been more successful at creating consumers than raising awareness or recruiting activists. Half a million Make Poverty History bracelets have been sold in Canada, but fewer than half that number of people have signed on to participate in initiatives the campaign is spearheading.
Some of the charity bands are amusingly ironic. Doggles’ bracelets for dogs, which are meant to raise awareness for “no kill shelters,” come with a warning that the jewellery is in fact a choking hazard for your pet.
And Crafts’n’Scraps.com offers “fun and flexible silicone awareness jelly wristbands in cause colours.” Fusing fashion and charity has become all the rage.
In Britain, Oxfam and Christian Aid had to resort to selling batches of Make Poverty History white bands on eBay to undercut the ones being sold privately for up to seven times the original price. There have also been reports in Britain of playground fighting over the anti-bullying bracelets worn by soccer celebs sponsoring the cause.
The bigger wristband pioneers have faced ubiquity-inspired scrutiny. In Britain, the Make Poverty History campaign’s use of sweatshops to produce their white band bracelets generated some awareness, but not the kind they were hoping for. (In Canada, the white bands are manufactured in a Toronto union shop.) Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong bands are manufactured in China by Nike.
The bands were originally intended by Armstrong to symbolize “unity and strength.” But with the current bracelet blitzkrieg there is not enough unity of ideas to be found, and too much strength of advertising.
