Fan Rant: Bracelets and Benefit Dinners

So, IMDb has two stories about do-gooder celebs up this morning, one about Cameron Diaz calling the Oprah Winfrey show in support of her friend and fellow Angel Drew Barrymore, who was on the show to present a check for $1,000,000 to the United Nations World Food Program, and the other about Reese Witherspoon. Witherspoon is the cosmetic company Avon's "global ambassador for women's empowerment," and in that capacity, she kicked off Avon's partnership with the United Nations Development Fund for Women by announcing that Avon will be selling $3 "Women's Empowerment Bracelets" online to benefit the fund.

The slogan for the partnership is "Empower women, change our world," and if you go to the Avon website to the bracelet, it tells you to "wear the bracelet that could change the world." A sidebar on the bracelet's product page blithely tells you that the bracelet will "go great with the Speak Out Against Domestic Violence Keychain!" No, I'm not making that up.

I recently saw a film for the Oxford Film Festival called Beyond the Call. This documentary tells the story of three ordinary (some might say extraordinary) men who spend most of their time and money actually getting much-needed food and medical supplies -- and in one case, even a solar-powered oven to a remote girls' school -- directly to people struggling desperately to survive within the most war-torn, dangerous parts of the world. These men risk life and limb, literally, to drive supplies to regions where even the United Nations and other aid organizations can't get to, and they don't do it by selling bracelets.

According to the Avon site, the first $500,000 in sales from the bracelet will be matched by the company for a total of $1,000,000 to be donated to the fund, which sponsors projects which "will empower women around the world." Okay, great, I'm not saying that's not a worthy cause. But rather than spending the money to have the bracelet designed and manufactured, and trying to convince women with money to spend buying Avon products that buying and wearing it makes them a better person because they're "showing solidarity" with their sisters in Third World countries who can barely buy rice to keep their kids from starving, why not just make a donation and announce that you've done it? I mean, we're talking about a company with almost $10 billion in revenue in 2007. As for Witherspoon, back in December, IMDb reported that she's the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, raking in some $15-20 million per picture.

Here's the thing. My dislike for these "buy this bracelet to feel better about yourself by showing you support this cause" campaigns is almost-but-not-quite equal to my dislike for those splashy benefit dinners where celebs pay a small fortune per-plate to eat a gourmet meal in support of, say, starving children in Africa. Does the irony of events like that never strike celebs? Does it really take a trendy event with the opportunity to dress up in designer duds and eat a fancy meal to get celebs to fork over cash to a charitable cause? And wouldn't those causes be far better served if, instead of spending the money it must take to put on such an event to begin with, celebs would just donate what they'd spend to attend them directly to the charity being touted?

In the case of the bracelets Witherspoon is promoting, how great would it have been if, instead of selling bracelets, Witherspoon donated 10% of her take off her next film, say, $1.5 million, and Avon matched that amount, and then instead of pushing these "solidarity" bracelets on their site, Avon and Witherspoon talked about the donation, what specific projects the money was going to fund and why they're important, and then offered their customers a "donate" button where they could make donations in the amount of their choice that would go directly to the fund?

They'd raise a lot more money for the cause, and would do so without it coming across as a self-serving marketing campaign. Say what you will about Angelina Jolie, but she and Brad Pitt have been donating millions to the causes they believe in, putting their money into directly supporting people who need it. To be perfectly fair to Witherspoon here, I don't know that she doesn't also donate millions of dollars to charitable causes. For all I know, she's been hanging out with refugees and orphans in war-torn regions, talking to rape victims in Darfur, and driving trucks loaded with supplies into remotest Afghanistan. If she is doing those things, I've not heard about it lately; what I have heard about is this bracelet campaign which, so far as I can see, involves her lending her face and name to selling bracelets for Avon, loosely wrapped in the respectability cloak of womens' empowerment.

I'm all for celebs helping out and sharing their wealth, but to me, it just means a lot more when they're forking their own cash over rather than promoting something for a multi-billion dollar corporation. Here's your chance to sound off, Cinematical readers. When your favorite celebs promote a charitable cause, what means the most to you? Discuss away ...