🩷 Innocent, silly, sexual, empowering — all shades of pink. Part 1
Few other colors have as rich and as controversial history as pink. Recognized already in ancient Roman literature, it was described with the Latin word Roseus meaning “rosy” or “pink”. Early humans quickly transitioned from admiring pink in the natural world to attempting to wear it; for example, in the Andes Mountains about 9,000 years ago, fierce hunters in what is now Peru wore tailored leather clothing with a pink hue thanks to red ochre, an iron oxide pigment that is one of the oldest natural pigments used by humans.
Everyone heard of rich red and purple as royal colors — the pigments making these were hard to find in nature, and therefore costly. For centuries only the nobility could afford to wear garments colored like this. In the 13th and 14th centuries, in works by Cimabue and Duccio, the Christ child was sometimes portrayed dressed in pink, the color associated with the body of Christ.
Around the 18th century, the situation changed — pastel colors became very fashionable in all the courts of Europe, especially during the Rococo era. Perhaps the most contributory influence on pink’s power was Madame de Pompadour — the mistress of King Louis XV. She was often portrayed by the painter François Boucher sporting her signature pink gowns and shoes, most notably in his 1759 piece Madame de Pompadour, where she is portrayed applying rouge from a box of cosmetics — the blushed cheeks implying female sexuality. The pink color in this period became attached to both the frivolity of French high fashion and the symbol of charm, allure, and eroticism.
Since then pink has been used in plenty of different contexts: for example, adopted by bullfighters in Spain. Juan Belmonte, the famed 1920s bullfighter, wore bright pink socks for luck in the ring. The color also rendered his legs highly visible and accentuated their quick movement.
From the 18th-century court to the 20th-century home, pink gained further traction in the 1950s. Historians believe this began as part of a post-World War II effort to reestablish traditional, Western gender roles. As women were pushed out of the workforce and back into the home, advertisers sought to re-feminize them. As British professor of design history, Penny Sparke writes: “Linked with the idea of childhood, [pink] represented the emphasis on distinctive gendering that underpinned 1950s society, ensuring that women were women and men were men.”. The ideal housewife was now depicted dressed in frilly, colorful clothing, while men’s fashion became simple and neutral, reflecting the uniforms of their recent military service. You can imagine a mental connection of male fashion with serious, official matters and women’s with bringing joy, being an eye candy, and sporting a role of innocent, pretty decoration. Historian Valerie Steele makes a point that “our attitudes toward pink are probably influenced by our attitudes toward women, [and] usually when something is associated with women, it’s contaminated. You can’t wipe away years of history”.
The 50s were a decade when the duality of pink was marked clearly. A perfect example would be Marilyn Monroe’s wearing iconic pink gowns in Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1953) or Niagara (1953). The looks paired with her typecast “dumb blonde” film roles and her pin-up past work together to reinforce the star as a sex symbol to be desired by audiences. As film scholar Richard Dyer argues, Monroe represented the epitome of sex in conservative 1950s American society.
On the other end of the scale, the First Lady of the United States Mamie Eisenhower — wife of President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961) — cultivated the aforementioned image of the ideal housewife through her famous “First Lady Pink” looks.
Beyond the 1950s, pink gracefully shrugged off its conformity shackles and donned a brand-new role: that of a rebel with a cause. Paul Simonon, the bassist for the English punk band The Clash, famously said that “pink is the only true rock and roll color”.
The late 60s brought attention to LGBTQ movements and once again, pink was brought up for a discussion. It became a symbol in the discussion about breaking free from the confines of heterosexual norms, challenging the notion that gay men should be perceived as feminine and gay women as masculine. One of the most disturbing manifestations of this discourse was gay male prisoners of Nazi concentration camps being forced to wear pink triangles (while lesbians were branded ‘asocial’, wearing black triangles). Gay liberation after 1969 reclaimed not only terms of abuse such as ‘queer’ but also the pink triangle for self-reference.
On a different note, in the era of the Cold War’s chilly embrace, the U.S. had its own derogatory twist on pink. Suspected Communist sympathizers were branded as “pinkos,” a term that not-so-subtly implied a person had “washed-red” tendencies toward radical politics.
Through the following decades, pink started to evolve. The end of the 90s and the beginning of the 00s became an era of unapologetic frivolousness in pop culture. In the 2001 chick flick classic Legally Blonde, the film flips the script on those tired “dumb blonde” stereotypes. It tells the story of a sorority sister turning herself into a legal eagle, all while being draped in hot pink creations. When Madonna rocked her iconic pink Material Girl ensemble, she was rewriting the rules; positioning herself as the modern-day Marilyn Monroe, a blonde dynamo for the Second Wave Feminism era. She took Monroe’s tragic stardom and transformed it into a tale of female strength and survival conversating with capitalism at its maximum speed.
More recently, pink got back to its more rebellious meaning when it got associated with feminist activism. A great example would be the women’s march in the US in 2017 when the protesters took to the streets in pink “pussy hats”. They were responding to a recording of then-president Donald Trump, in which he boasted about grabbing women “by the pussy”. This explicit connection between pink, female genitalia, and activism is a feminist statement that emphasizes women’s lack of autonomy over their own bodies in a patriarchal society.
And now, on the fabulous stage of TikTok, the #Bimbo trend is all the rage. It’s where feminine-presenting content creators take the once-dismissive “bimbo” label and turn it into a cheeky, empowering aesthetic and a brand-new feminist lifestyle. We can observe the sassy reclaiming of words, proving that you can be fierce, fabulous, and in control — no matter what labels society throws your way. This phenomenon was strengthened by the recently released Barbie movie. The discussion about the use of pink in the film will be broadened in part 3.
Part 2 and 3 of the article coming soon!
