What’s funny, to me at least, is what becomes the fashion rage one moment, and then the faux pas the next. Take the current trend of having a large rubberband around your wrist in support of some cause. It all started with the Lance Armstrong Livestrong bracelets, of which I own. And then from there it went to, support our troops, stop bullying, give blood, support breast cancer, basically nowadays you could find any cause under the sun with a corresponding rubberband bracelet.

Of course like I said earlier, I succumb to some of these ideas. Mostly not to seem ‘hip’ or anything like that, but because I support the cause. Like the Livestrong ones, I have one because my best friend has had cancer for most of his life and well, I know what it does to a person from seeing him deal with it. So anyway I can help give some money to find a way to cure it, that’s fine by me.

However I’ve spent a better part of yesterday, and this morning trying to get some of the StandupSpeakup bracelets from Europe. What are those you ask? Well you could click on the link to find out, but I’ll summarize it. In Europe there’s been a recent rash of racist abuse hurled towards some black footballers, most notably Thierry Henry. So Henry went to Nike and said “Lets do something like Livestrong,” only instead of one single-colored band they’re a black and white band intertwined with each other. And much like the Livestrong bracelets they’re not highly sought after, mostly because everyone “cool” seems to be wearing one. But like the Livestrong stuff I’ve been trying to get one to help support something. Doesn’t look like it’s going to happen though because they’ve been going on ebay for about £15-20, which translates to about 30 bucks. Now keep in mind they “retail” [though really it’s just a suggested donation] for about £2. So that’s a nice markup people are making off of something that’s supposed to go for a good cause.

So it’s looking like I won’t be able to get one, at least for a good long while.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 15th, 2005 at 10:09 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.