The Deep Love and Human Reality Check of Ralph Lauren's Pink Pony Campaign
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The Deep Love and Human Reality Check of Ralph Lauren's Pink Pony Campaign
2020 marks the 20 years anniversary of Ralph Lauren’s Pink Pony Initiative. The designer launched the fund after the death from breast cancer at age 57 of Ralph Lauren’s close friend, Washington Post fashion editor Nina Hyde.
Lauren has focused, in particular, on communities of color in his efforts to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer, based on his keen awareness that these communities are most often underserved in access to quality health care. Teaming up with the world-renowned Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, Ralph Lauren opened a major cancer center in Harlem, Since its founding in 2003, MSK Ralph Lauren Center (MSK RLC) “has cared for thousands of patients making it a beacon for accessible, compassionate cancer care for residents of Harlem and beyond,” writes the Ralph Lauren corporate communications office.
Honoring real progress made in the fight against cancer, Ralph Lauren’s Pink Pony launched this year a multilayered 360 marketing campaign titled “More Conversations, More Love”. The exciting initiative highlights a diverse and influential cast of cancer survivors, survivors and supporters — each of them individuals who have suffered personally with a cancer diagnosis and the friends and family members who have gone on the cancer journey with them.
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi for Ralph Lauren Pink Pony
In AOC’s typical dig deeper fashion, I just researched Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s involvement in the Ralph Lauren Pink Pony project. I read Dr. Kendi’s book ‘How To Be an Antiracist’ at the height of the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis this summer and was part of a book club discussing his work.
Dr. Kendi, age 38, is very recently the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, where he is creating the Center for Antiracist Research. I was not prepared for what I just read at Ralph Lauren’s British website.
What has your personal cancer journey looked like?
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi: I am the son of a woman who had breast cancer, and my wife also fought breast cancer when she was in her mid-30s. I was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in January of 2018, and then I underwent six months of chemotherapy. I had surgery in August 2018. Luckily, I’ve been OK ever since. There was a time in which I didn’t think I would be here.
What life lessons have you learned from cancer—in retrospect, what do you draw from this experience?
IK: How critical it is to be a warrior. As we’re being warriors to fight racism in the body politic, and I’d spent years as a part of that larger battle against racism and sexism and homophobia and other forms of bigotry, and as we’re on the battlefield, we’re literally fighting for humanity. By the same token, we have our personal battles. We have to become personal warriors to fight for a human meaning ourselves. And, if you win that fight, to then hopefully turn around and fight for the lives of humanity.
In this very divisive time, how can we bring more people together to recognize that we are all part of the same family?
IK: I appreciate Pink Pony for driving home love because, in many ways, love is what’s going to save us. Love is a verb. Certainly, love saved me. My wife basically dragged me to get a colonoscopy completely against my will. I may not have gotten a colonoscopy until two months later because there was so much backlog. I can only imagine, I suspect, I wonder if there were other people who called around the same time I did who weren’t able to go to get a colonoscopy until two months later, and whether that two months became the difference between them living or dying. We don’t have a health care system that’s loving. We certainly have many doctors who aren’t empathetic with their patients and see them as the other, which is a problem. I recently read a piece that stated that we’re only spending 2.5 percent on public health. 2.5 percent. In a different type of world, it would be 50 or 75 percent. Can you imagine the number of diseases and the number of illnesses we would be able to reduce among all people?
