Seeing red and wearing pink: Trajectories of cultural power in the AIDS and breast cancer ribbons

Abstract

How does the cultural power of a public symbol shift over time? The public retrievability of the iconic red and pink ribbons followed very different paths: red ribbons rose rapidly and fell out of favor just as quickly, whereas the presence of the pink ribbon grew steadily over time. What explains these different trajectories? We identify and explain these differences through an analysis of archival newspaper data from 1991 to 2014 and through the use of secondary sources to create case studies of important moments in the histories of these symbols. The paper makes three interventions. 1) It elaborates and extends Schudson’s (1989) discussion of cultural power, refining the mechanism of retrievability and adding recognizability. 2) It demonstrates the importance of organizations in maintaining high retrievability and recognizability in the face of criticism and controversy, along with politicians, celebrities, and corporations. 3) It introduces “genre violation” as a mechanism undermining a symbol’s cultural power.