NFL Player Honors Mom Lost to Breast Cancer in Big Way

"My hair is pink, my heart is pink, and my toenails are pink." That's the confession Pittsburgh Steelers running back DeAngelo Williams offers in a video he posted to Twitter Sunday, and the reason he did so shows his heart is as large as it is colorful. He explains that he wears it to honor those who are fighting or have fought breast cancer—including his mom, Sandra Hill, who died of breast cancer at the age of 53 in May 2014, as well as four of his aunts who succumbed to the disease, Today reports.

It was Williams who led the drive to allow NFL players to wear pink accessories (think pink cleats) during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October, something the league has permitted since 2009, per Fox Sports. He tried to get permission from the NFL to accessorize with pink for the entirety of this season—a request that's been denied due to the league's uniform rules; his hair, dyed pink at the tips, apparently does not violate those rules. "Pink is not a color, it's a culture to me," he says in the video, which is accompanied on Twitter by the hashtag #WeAreInThisTogether. (A promising new study says a gene test can show which breast cancer patients need chemo and which ones don't.)