Usage As An Awareness Ribbon
Brown ribbons are worn on the lapel for anti-tobacco, colon cancer (Brown ribbon is the alternate color, Dark blue is the official ribbon color), and colorectal cancer awareness.
Brown ribbons have also been proposed by comedian George Carlin, meaning "Eat shit motherfucker", as a cynical response to the preponderance of other ribbons as symbols of political or social movements.
P.J. O'Rourke has indirectly suggested a brown ribbon campaign to fight diarrhea:
"Political means could be used to prevent almost all deaths from childhood diarrhea. Diarrhea is spread by contaminated water. Public sanitation is, like personal security, national defense, and rule of law, one of the few valid reasons for politics to exist. Lowly, semicomic diarrhea kills 2,866,000 people a year worldwide, 2,474,000 of them children under the age of five. This is ten times the number of people who die from AIDS. But no one is wearing a brown ribbon on his tuxedo lapel at the Academy Awards or marching up the Mall in Washington carrying a sign reading DIARRHEA -- IT CAN BE CONTAINED."
Read more about this topic: Brown Ribbon
Famous quotes containing the words usage, awareness and/or ribbon:
“...Often the accurate answer to a usage question begins, “It depends.” And what it depends on most often is where you are, who you are, who your listeners or readers are, and what your purpose in speaking or writing is.”
—Kenneth G. Wilson (b. 1923)
“Awakening in the morning returns us to life, and to awareness of death.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“I’ll tell you how the Sun rose—
A Ribbon at a time—”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)