Not Pinto, we are talking about the unibrowed painter. The excess-hair-between-the-eyebrows look is set to become a fashion statement, as Decembrow, an initiative by Feministing(.com) urges you to grow a unibrow to generate funds and awareness for women's health. Across the globe, supporting a cause has taken on a whole new avatar, with groups asking you to shave your head and grow sideburns for a good cause. Sowmya Rajaram finds out why charity isn't always serious business
Not Pinto, we are talking about the unibrowed painter. The excess-hair-between-the-eyebrows look is set to become a fashion statement, as Decembrow, an initiative by Feministing(.com) urges you to grow a unibrow to generate funds and awareness for women's health. Across the globe, supporting a cause has taken on a whole new avatar, with groups asking you to shave your head and grow sideburns for a good cause.u00a0Sowmya Rajaramu00a0finds out why charity isn't always serious business
Beat cancer with a bald head.
Cure depression with a moustache worthy of a Maharaja.
Generate awareness about HIV AIDS in Africa with sideburns to rival Wolverine's.
Help out a women's charity by not tweezing your eyebrows until you look like bohemian painter Frida Kahlo.
And if real hair isn't your thing, get a virtual Santa beard to wallop leukaemia out of the way. 'Tis the season to get hirsute, after all. Oh, did we say hirsute? We meant charitable.
Charity is no longer just about hard work, lectures and boring campaigns. With quirky initiatives like the World's Greatest Shave, Movember, Decemburns, and Decembeard, supporting a cause to raise funds for a charity is easy, and exciting.
All you have to do to create awareness and source funds for any cause that tugs at your heart, from HIV AIDS to prostate cancer, is find a sponsor for these wacky concepts.
Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in 1907. Remembered
as much for her use of intense, vibrant colours as her unibrow, she is
one of the first iconic names that come to mind when we think of
unplucked eyebrows. A unibrow (or monobrow) refers to the presence of
abundant hair between the eyebrows, so that they seem to converge to form
one long eyebrow. The Sesame Street character Bert sports a unibrow which
he often wrinkles up as a result of aggravation from his roommate Ernie.
Hindi film actress Kajol sports a distinct unibrow. Pic/AFP photo
Play a game, save the snow leopard
Coins for Change, a Walt Disney and Club Penguin initiative that kicked off last week, involves kids who donate virtual money to various charities that provide medical help, build safe places and raise environmental awareness.
The money is earned by playing Pizzatron 3000, Paint by Letters and other virtual educational games. At the end of the event which runs till December 27, the players' virtual donations will serve as votes to determine how a $1 million contribution from Disney Online Studios will be divided among pre-selected charitable projects.
Club Penguin is a virtual zone for children aged six to 14 to interact and collaborate in a supervised environment. Nitin Chawla, executive director, Disney Interactive Media Group, India, says, "Coins for Change seeks to empower children who use Club Penguin to choose a cause that matters to them, helping them affect real change. The 10-day campaign allows players to donate the virtual coins they earn by playing games online, to real-world causes."
So you have six year-olds doing their bit for snow leopard conservancy, education programmes for kids in Himalayan schools, and Haiti earthquake victims. Clearly, big results don't necessarily mean hours of back breaking labour.
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Grow a Mo in November
Movember(.com), a seven year-old, worldwide initiative to generate funds and up awareness about men's health, was born of a drunken joke between a couple of blokes "sitting around a pub in Fitzroy, Melbourne, cracking up on how they could grow a moustache throughout the month of November, and call it 'Movember'", says Luke Benge from Movember Headquarters.
The worldwide phenomenon now has everybody from Hollywood actor James Franco to England cricketer Kevin Pietersen letting the shaving razor rust all through the month of November.
How does someone growing a some hair on the upper lip generate funds for men's health and cancer research? Benge is happy to explain. "Men sporting Movember moustaches, known as Mo Bros, become walking, talking billboards for the 30 days of November. Through their actions and words, they raise awareness by prompting private and public conversation around the issue of men's health."
The money comes from funds they raise through seeking sponsorship for their Mo-growing efforts.
And if you thought that's just a whole lot of talk, the statistics shout otherwise. This year alone, over 60 million dollars were raised worldover.
Eyebrows for the non-bros
Decembrow, a campaign to get women to grow unibrows (the presence of abundant hair between the eyebrows, so that they seem to converge to form one long eyebrow), in an effort to get people talking about women's health, is raising eyebrows all over the world for its purported aim to challenge gender stereotypes.
Started by feminist website Feministing (.com), Decembrow is, as initiator Lori Adelman says, "all about the brow. Specifically, the unibrow." Inspired by Movember and the unibrow trend in Tajikistan, it aims to challenge cultural norms about women's facial hair while raising money for a good cause. You can, of course, donate to a charity of your choice.
Close shave
If Movember's getting you to Mo-up, the World's Greatest Shave(.com) is asking you to take it all off. The hair, we mean. Tania Cavaiuolo, General Manager for Marketing & Communications at the Leukaemia Foundation of Australia, explains: "The World's Greatest Shave is a fun way to help raise awareness and funds to help tackle a serious cause -- blood cancer. Each year in Australia, around 10,000 people are diagnosed with leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma. People who shave their hair understand what it feels like to have no hair, which happens to most patients undergoing treatment for cancer."
Wait, that raises money? "More than you would think," is Cavaiuolo's response. "Because shaving your head is a big thing for many people -- especially for women -- people raise a lot more money than they think they will." Since 1998, an excess of $106 million (Rs 480 crore) has been raised to fund blood cancer research and patient care.
All participants do to shave or colour their hair is sign up at https://www.worldsgreatestshave.com/. They then ask friends, family and colleagues to sponsor them in an effort to raise funds to support the Leukaemia Foundation's Vision to Cure and Mission to Care.
More hairy tales
From shaving to growing a beard, and burns Decembeard(.com.au) is an augmented reality application that lets you superimpose a Santa Claus beard on your face, using your webcam. Once the digital beard photo is created and uploaded, IdeaWorks, the Australian agency behind the concept, will donate $5 (Rs 226) to one of three pre-selected charities. Simple, and effective. At last count, 1,938 Decembeards had been cultivated.
Then there's Decemburns, a campaign to have you grow sideburns during the month of December to help raise awareness to HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.
The idea, as the website plainly puts it, "is to look silly enough to evoke the question 'why do you look like that?', giving you the opportunity to explain to your friends and family that women are disproportionately affected by this disease in Africa, and that men carry a disproportionate amount of the power to improve the situation."
Not interested in actually growing the burns? Photoshop them on, or send in your photos to these guys, and they'll do it for you. The idea is the same -- get people to sponsor your wolf-like look, and raise moolah.
The handbook
The guide to participating in a fun social cause
"Living in India isn't a barrier to taking part in the World's Greatest Shave. Every year hundreds of people around the world sign up. You can do all your fundraising online -- update your personal profile page, post messages to your Facebook page, send emails and SMS your friends. You can even invite others to join your team. If you aren't ready to shave or colour yourself, you can donate to the Leukaemia Foundation or sponsor a stranger who is taking part."
-- Tania Cavaiuolo, General Manager for Marketing & Communications at the Leukaemia Foundation of Australia
"One of the greatest features of Movember is that by simply growing a Mo through the month, you create a talking point. When anyone comments on the Mo, it's the opportune time to discuss Movember and men's health issues. The awareness raised is key since it encourages men to get a health check up and address issues before it's potentially too late."
-- Luke Benge from Movember Headquarters
The celebs are doing it too
Australian cricketer Andrew Symonds shaved off his dreadlocks in 2009 to raise money for Leukaemia patients. His live, televised session with the barber (dubbed as the first time he was going to see his own scalp in three years) raised $10,000 (approx Rs 4.5 lakh) for the Leukaemia Foundation of Australia.
England cricketer Kevin Pietersen posted an image of himself growing a moustache on his Twitter feed during the Ashes series last month, asking his followers to sponsor him. His donation page said: 'Growing a Mo during the Ashes for the cause.'
Jesse Hughes, from the rock band Eagles of Death Metal, showed his support for Movember by letting a moustache adorn his face in 2009, and even gave a shout out to Movember in front of a capacity crowd at the Wembley Stadium in England during a band performance.
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