Tutu Power

Some of you may have read the title of this post and thought it might refer to the esteemed Nobel Peace Prize winner, Desmond Tutu, the Anglican bishop from South Africa.  Indeed, Tutu is a powerful symbol of peace and a promoter of civil rights.  However, the title is not referring to him.

The title is referring to a pink ballerina tutu and the power it can have when a man uses it in support of women fighting breast cancer.

According to an article in Shine, photographer Bob Carey took a picture of himself in a pink tutu to donate to the Arizona Ballet as a fundraiser in 2003.  A short time later, his wife developed breast cancer, and to help cheer her up, he took more pictures of himself in the pink tutu in different locales. 

Over the years, the pink tutu pictures evolved into something more: a way to raise breast cancer awareness and money for other women suffering from the illness through The Tutu Project, a website that recently launched on March 12, 2012.

If you ask me, I think there's nothing more manly than seeing a man in a pink tutu and knowing that he's doing it for his wife and others with breast cancer.  It's been said that a picture speaks a thousand words, and that's definitely the case where Bob Carey's photos are concerned.  Those photos show that breast cancer is something that affects not only women but the men who love them.  Husbands, boyfriends, fathers, brothers, sons, cousins.  And it affects people everywhere, across the country and across the world.

We need more people brave enough to wear pink tutus as well as tutus of other colors.

Getting in a tutu frame of mind on the perch.