{"id":1900,"date":"2013-10-29T09:55:55","date_gmt":"2013-10-29T15:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/carynriswold\/?p=1900"},"modified":"2013-10-31T11:16:38","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T17:16:38","slug":"doing-something-real-the-ichairraiser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/carynriswold\/2013\/10\/doing-something-real-the-ichairraiser\/","title":{"rendered":"Doing Something Real: The #ICHairRaiser"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>I tweet-captioned this photo \u201cAt #IllinoisCollege we just might give you the hair off our heads!\u201d<\/p>\n

This week, faculty, staff, and students where I work are donating hair to Beautiful Lengths<\/a>, Pantene\u2019s partnership with the American Cancer Society<\/a> to make real-hair wigs for women battling cancer.\u00a0 Three of us went under the scissors together yesterday, and at least three others have also done so (we\u2019re still gathering all the pics).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the kind of service that makes sense to me.\u00a0 It\u2019s real, tangible, and direct.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the nonsense that too often comes with \u201cpinktober<\/a>\u201d and \u201cpinkwashing<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 Over at The Huffington Post<\/a><\/em> blog, Leisha Davison-Yahol writes that \u201cthe commercialism has gotten out of hand<\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0 She continues:<\/p>\n

And while I do think we need more awareness and education (about metastatic disease, about how young women\u00a0can\u00a0develop breast cancer, about how women (young and old) DO die from this disease, about the importance of research, etc.), I don\u2019t think we need the kind of awareness that buying a jar of salsa with a pink ribbon on it brings<\/strong>. While I hardly ever see \u201cawareness\u201d products addressing the topics above, I can\u2019t go anywhere without seeing pink products. Heck, I just have to look out of my front window to see giant pink garbage totes. The stores are filled with pink as companies try to make a buck off breast cancer. <\/strong>If you look carefully at these products, you\u2019ll find that some of them don\u2019t even donate a cent to breast cancer awareness, support, research, etc<\/strong>. And oftentimes those that do make a very minimal donation-and not always to organizations\/programs where the money is well spent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Our project originated last spring, when my colleague Betsy Hall and I were planning our first year learning community with the college\u2019s 2013 theme of Service in mind.\u00a0 In fact, Betsy was just sitting behind me in a meeting and said, \u201cHey, your hair is getting long.\u00a0 Are you interested in donating it in the fall?\u201d\u00a0 She\u2019d done something like that before, and I hadn\u2019t.\u00a0 I immediately said I would and we started talking about how we could involve our students, and even get others on campus to participate.<\/p>\n

When I was sitting in the stylists chair yesterday, I thought of how it was like giving blood.\u00a0 That\u2019s something I have done many many many times over the decades, in part because I can and I know that not everyone is able to donate.\u00a0 Hair that\u2019s too thin or too chemically treated or too damaged isn\u2019t easily given up.\u00a0 I was talking with a friend recently who said that her curly hair grows really slowly and so she\u2019d never be able to have (and replace!) the requisite minimum 8 inches for a donation like this.\u00a0 She also told me the story of a dear friend of hers who died of cancer a few years ago.\u00a0 She said that they day her friend got her wig, she had a new spirit and pride in her deteriorating body.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I did this.<\/p>\n

I got my first mammogram a few years ago, probably sooner than I had to, after my friend Deanna Thompson was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer in her early 40s.\u00a0 Deanna has written an amazing memoir about living with cancer called Hoping For More<\/a><\/em> that I truly hope you will read.\u00a0 Her theological reflections on things like lament and church and even the Caring Bridge<\/a> website as spiritual community are remarkable.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I did this.<\/p>\n

There were other things that came along with this little project.\u00a0 As I said, Betsy and I are teaching in a first year learning community, which for us means that her English writing class is linked with my Religion first year seminar.\u00a0 The same fifteen students are in each of our classes, and we have four joint class meetings and two joint assignments.\u00a0 Our overall thematic connection is food (not hair, though both are tangible and meaningful parts of human life \u2026 hmmm\u2026), with our students reading five religious autobiographies variously focused on food, faith, and justice in my seminar, and their writing class with her centered around food rhetoric and the writing process.\u00a0 In one of her sessions with our students, as a way of having them practice important skills like analysis and evaluation, she had them conduct rhetorical analysis of several hair-donation organizations, and evaluate them within the rhetorical context of Illinois College<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The students selected Beautiful Lengths<\/a>, which Betsy and I also liked in part because of their partnership with the American Cancer Society, and their focus on supporting women living with cancer.\u00a0 We decided that the tacit support of a corporate entity and its capitalist mission was just going to come with the territory.\u00a0 In the end, we hope that the students learned something about evaluation and analysis in the process.<\/p>\n

Then, the promotion was up to us.\u00a0 The owner of Inner Harmony<\/a>, a local salon, offered discounted haircuts for anyone coming in as part of this project, and we decided to do it during the week of Halloween and call it a HairRaiser \u2026 \u201cservice that\u2019s scary good!\u201d\u00a0 The fact that Betsy brought along her collection of Edgar Allan Poe short stories to read as she waited wasn\u2019t entirely intentional \u2026 or was it?!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s doing something real.\u00a0 We grew this hair, and we are able to grow more.\u00a0 Some women aren\u2019t in that position right now.\u00a0 Until we\u2019re able to treat cancer without destroying the rest of the body, the best we can do is give them the hair off our heads.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/strong> \u00a0Here\u2019s a picture of Illinois College student Morgan with her donation and her fab new haircut!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ANOTHER UPDATE:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a picture of Illinois College student Jasmine bagging up her donation to Beautiful Lengths!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I tweet-captioned this photo \u201cAt #IllinoisCollege we just might give you the hair off our heads!\u201d This week, faculty, staff, and students where I work are donating hair to Beautiful Lengths, Pantene\u2019s partnership with the American Cancer Society to make real-hair wigs for women battling cancer.\u00a0 Three of us went under the scissors together yesterday, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1142,"featured_media":1901,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441,4],"tags":[658,630,656,660,659,657],"class_list":["post-1900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-feminism","tag-american-cancer-society","tag-beautiful-lengths","tag-illinois-college","tag-pinktober","tag-pinkwashing","tag-service"],"yoast_head":"\nDoing Something Real: The #ICHairRaiser<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I 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