Livestrong magnet

By Steve Portigal at 11:56 am, Thursday April 20 2006

You don’t have to wear the bracelet now, you can get a magnetic picture of a bracelet. It’s not about the act of wearing, it’s just about the image of the bracelet? Where does the meaning reside?

Tags: awareness, bracelet, cancer, car, charity, lance armstrong, livestrong, magnet, symbol

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8 Responses to “Livestrong magnet”

[IMG ] It turns out my prediction that the next logical step of car magnets was going to be ones shaped like silicone awareness bracelets was TRUE! Sadly I can’t sue for royalties, since it seems to have happened a while ago, but I only just spotted one recently! photo via Flickr

Pingback by Another Limited Rebellion 01.22.07 @ 11:50 pm

Several years ago, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. During my recovery, I read Lance Armstrong’s book “It’s Not About the Bike” in which he details his struggles with testicular and brain cancer. So when the bracelets first appeared, I bought one and began to wear it. It has been on my wrist ever since.

In the meantime, any number of different colored bracelets have proliferated, and while they all support noble causes, the whole device seems to have become co-opted in much the same way as the “Support Our Troops” ribbon magnets for cars have spawned not just scores of imitators, but larger magnets…so that you can be more “patriotic” than your neighbor, just by having either more ribbons, bigger ones, or both. What we have here is some sort of convergence, before the phenomenon becomes so saturated that even the most lemming-like among us has had enough.

But maybe not forever. Yesterday I saw one of those “Baby On Board” window thingies.

Comment by dan reich 04.22.06 @ 1:54 pm

Thanks for the personal angle on the story, Dan. As well as your articulate summary of the converging phenoms. You’ve connected well with what I felt when I saw that magnet, but I couldn’t put it that well – so thank you!

By the way, excellent Rob Walker Consumed column about the bracelet proliferation.

Comment by Steve Portigal 04.22.06 @ 2:38 pm