An Open Letter to Tiffany & Co. About Their Advertising Campaign for the Ring That Helps Women Remember They Survived Cancer

Dear Tiffany & Co.,

I’d all but given up on ever being able to remember the time I had a life-threatening disease when, lo and behold, the ad for your Celebration Rings popped up in my Instagram feed, and I knew that my prayers had been answered. The tagline for your ring promised it would be “the ring that reminds her of surviving cancer.” I’m writing to express my sincerest thanks for creating a ring for women like me who can’t seem to recall having lived through cancer. Although I am a thirteen-year breast cancer survivor, I started to notice myself forgetting about that whole mess somewhere around year six (or was it seven?).

But you didn’t make any assumptions about what women could and couldn’t remember. No, Tiff—can I call you Tiff?—you understood that a person could undergo a double mastectomy with reconstruction from their stomach fat and muscle followed by chemotherapy, which made them lose their hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes; that they could have their ovaries removed, setting off early menopause at the age of thirty-five, while tending to the needs of four young children and simply NOT REMEMBER any of that. At least not without a fantabulous ring, anyway!

People assume that you remember things like having red, toxic, nausea-inducing sludge pumped through your veins for five months (and you know what happens when you assume!), but I’ve expended a ridiculous amount of energy keeping up the charade of remembering that happened to me. Let me tell you, it’s been exhausting. At the ten-year mark, friends would congratulate me on a decade of being cancer-free, tell me how healthy I appeared, or comment on how long my hair had finally gotten, and I’d have to smile and nod piously, pretending to know what they were talking about.

I can’t help but imagine how much less awkward it would have been if I’d had your ring when my teenage daughter, while hunting for “vintage” clothes, came across an old wig buried deep in my closet. She nonchalantly remarked that she’d found my cancer wig, at which point I nearly blew it by replying, “My wha—um, oh, riiigggghhhhht, my cancer wig.”

Whenever I’d undress in front of the mirror and see the jagged, red hip-to-hip scar, my breasts (which are positioned unusually high up for a woman nearing fifty) and the Dr. Frankenstein nipples fashioned from scar tissue, I’d have to think REALLY HARD to remember how I came to acquire all of these markings on my body.

Was I part of a government science experiment on how to build a better woman?

Did I sell my organs for cash to pay for an extension on my house?

Did I escape from a sex cult and forget that too?

But that was all before the blessed day that the algorithm fairies, in their infinite wisdom, sent your cancer-remembering jewelry my way. I absolutely cannot wait for UPS to deliver my new lease on life.

Who would have thought that a delicate wisp of gold set with a pink stone (because breast cancer, wink, wink!) could have served as a visual shot of Ginkgo biloba?

It’s so simple, I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of it myself! (Or maybe I did and just forgot.)

Although I’m sure you have only the most altruistic of intentions, I think the market for your cancer-tastic ring is somewhat limited, and you’re leaving money on the table; after all, men get cancer too, and it’s a well-known fact, established by the mom-blogger community, that men can be rather forgetful.

Perhaps you might expand your line to include rings that help people remember they survived being evicted during the financial meltdown of 2008, walked in on their spouse sleeping with the Amazon delivery person, or got canceled on Twitter!

Thanks, Tiffany & Co., for this brilliant and life-altering product. I’m a lucky lady indeed—and not only because I didn’t die from my breast cancer. Oh, will you just look at me, remembering! Merely ordering your ring is already enhancing my cognitive abilities.

Sincerely,
Gila