Project Section: Celebrations
Celebrations
Our Celebrations project is kicking off with a bang! We’re putting Amelia Earhart back in the skies — in the form of a giant helium balloon! We’re going to change the face of parades all over the country with a new line of balloons featuring Great American Women — and Amelia is our first entry.
Visit our Put Amelia Earhart Back in the Skies! page for more info, and Join the 99 Club to help Amelia soar!
Our Celebrations project is focused on the following areas:
- National Holidays: There isn’t a single national holiday named after a woman. We have Columbus Day, Presidents Day (formerly Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday), and Martin Luther King Day — but not one holiday for a woman.
- Parades: Since its inception in 1924, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has featured 108 giant character balloons of historical figures and pop icons. Only ten of those character balloons have depicted females. The first female character balloon, Olive Oyl, wasn’t introduced until 1982 — almost 60 years after the parade began.
- Women’s Equality Day: August 26 of each year is Women’s Equality Day in the United States, commemorating the passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. Bella Abzug introduced the holiday and it was established in 1971; we’d like to see it celebrated!
Please email us at celebrations@equalvisibilityeverywhere.org if you’d like to help with our Celebrations project. We’ll need volunteer coordinators, researchers, letter writers, interns, and helpers of every description (see our How You Can Help page for more).
Celebrations Project Updates
Ta-da! Official artist sketch of the Amelia Earhart balloon!
August 17, 2010 by Suzanne Scoggins · 3 Comments »
Here it is, the artist’s rendering of the new Amelia Earhart balloon:
Bear in mind this thing will be humongous—with a 40-foot wingspan, it will be the same size as the real airplane!
The art has been through several iterations and tweaked in response to feedback from EVE’s 99 Club, and now it’s ready to go. The Earhart Estate has approved the renderings and the engineering crew is ready to start sculpting the clay model. (There are other elevations too, showing the balloon from all angles, but this one gives the best overall view I think.)
Now for the hard sell: if you haven’t already donated to the 99 Club, please consider helping out.
The contributions we’ve received so far have enabled us to make the first payment on the balloon, pay for the parade banner, and pay for the balloon handler suits (they’re going to look like a ground crew in flight suits).
But we still need to raise the rest of the money to cover expenses. …continue reading
Take the poll: coffee (mug), T (shirt), or ….
August 14, 2010 by Suzanne Scoggins · 8 Comments »
We are HUGELY grateful to all the 99 Club members who have helped us raise the funds for the Amelia Earhart balloon. We would be absolutely nowhere without your wonderful generosity. Thanks to you, we have made the down payment on the balloon, hired the artist, ordered and paid for the parade banner, and ordered and paid for the balloon handler costumes.
But we’re still short! So we’re thinking of offering some CafePress items as another way for people to support the Amelia Earhart balloon. The design would say something like, “I helped put Amelia back in the skies!”
What do you think? Which of these items do you think we should offer? You can check off more than one box, or suggest something else in the comments.
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Messenger bag from CafePress.
Black windbreaker from CafePress.
The ground crew for the Amelia Earhart balloon
August 10, 2010 by Suzanne Scoggins · 3 Comments »
This white jumpsuit was worn by Hilary Swank in the movie 'Amelia.' The studio donated it to the Ninety-Nines.
I’ve just placed the order for the white jumpsuits the balloon handlers will wear while guiding the Amelia Earhart balloon. We’re going to dress them to look like a ground crew, wearing suits similar to what Amelia herself wore. The costume pictured at right was worn by Hilary Swank in the movie “Amelia.”
Toni McKay at StarBound Entertainment (the balloon company) came up with the brilliant idea of using inexpensive Tyvek-type suits. They’re much cheaper than real jumpsuits and can be easily replaced. We don’t plan to have the balloon handlers roll around in mechanic grease to get that authentic lived-in look, but a little wear and tear won’t hurt. We’re also going to put stickers on the suits that say “A.E.,” though probably we’ll put them on the front rather than the back (for a variety of reasons).
We could have gone with custom t-shirts, the way a lot of balloon sponsors do, but we think the “flight suits” are much better. And cheaper!
These are the 'flight suits' our balloon handlers will wear.
P.S. Watch the slide show on our Amelia balloon page to see several pictures of balloon handlers in action.
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