Riding in Cars With Elizabeth Hurley
Talking to Elizabeth Hurley, you get the sense you can ask her anything. She is, after all, the woman who just told Today Show viewers what a mammogram feels like. So when the 52-year-old model and women's health advocate phoned us from her car in midtown Manhattan, we were amped on both Joe's Coffee and a serious case of tell-me-everything curiosity.
You've been working with the Estee Lauder Companies' Breast Cancer Campaign for 22 years. What's been the biggest change since you started?
When this campaign started, there was no pink ribbon. Nobody talked about breast cancer; magazines didn’t write about breast cancer; there was no Breast Cancer Awareness month. Today, we can really see what we’ve learned over the years: medical progress, research, seeing what our money is being spent on. And we feel really good about awareness and fundraising. Which makes us very, very keen now to get on with it and bring this whole thing to an end.
How close are we to ending breast cancer entirely?
Closer than ever. We've known since the '80s that survival rates are up 38% because there are better treatments, and better research. We just know more. So we’re saying in 25 years, we hope I don’t have to do this anymore. That’s the dream and the aim.
You have a teen son. How do you talk to men and boys about a women's health issue?
Because it's a human health issue. My son has been educated since he could talk about breast cancer, because I’ve been with the campaign for all that time. He’s part of the campaign. But it seems that everyone I meet in every walk of life has been affected by breast cancer somehow. Most men have mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, friends. (As it happens, we know that 1% of breast cancer is found in men, too.) And even though great progress has been made, every 2 minutes, somebody is diagnosed with breast cancer. 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed in their lifetime. So like it or not, men will be involved in this fight, too. They should be as informed and prepared as we are.
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