Pink Block: pink becomes a symbol of the new feminist wave

Sweet, delicate, pure, innocent, fragile. Demure, homely, childish, passive. No one would risk saying that “revolutionary” would outweigh pink’s reductive adjectives. The maximum of pure rebellion that the color had experienced until January 21, 2017 was to appear in the names of Rosa Luxemburgcommitted pacifist, killed in Berlin by Hitler followers, and Rosa Parks, activist against apartheid in the United States of the 1950s. Luxemburgo was active in butter-colored closed shirts and long A-line skirts, from khaki to gray, in the hourglass silhouette of a pre-black Coco Chanel loose world.

Parks, in her late 80s and beyond, began to indulge in cherry red clothing and lipstick. But the color, scorned even by girls under 10 in videos that went viral with gender issues (why do boys have the right to all colors of clothes and toys, and we don’t?, they asked) became synonymous with girl power when a sea of ​​pink flooded the streets from Amsterdam to the glaciers of Antarctica against a present that does not present itself as a bed of roses.

At first a demonstration against the sexist agenda of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, Women’s March – which included boys, men, gays, trans and supportive dogs, each with its touch of pink – encompassed the defense of free borders, the right to quality public health, respect for indigenous culture, the change to ecolomia (economy respecting ecology). “It was an intersectional experience, deep and very pink,” wrote illustrator Ali Fitzgerald, who drew the demonstration in Washington for New York magazine, where she maintains the Bermuda Square comic column, aimed at women.

Adherence to the color was spontaneous, but the choice is far from random. As an image has a more immediate impact than a thousand words, the organizers’ idea was to make pink go to the head.

“We proposed the pink hat to emphasize the idea of ​​union and assume, without any shame, female strength”, say the Californians Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman, creators of the Pussyhat, a hat with kitten ears. The duo created a manifesto-site and released the knitting pattern for the cap for download. Two months before the march, around 100,000 downloads had already been made.

Each pussyhat tells Trump, the self-proclaimed pussy grabber (pussy, pejorative term in English used by him), that the body is mine, the rights ditto, and nobody takes it.

“Pink represents love, compassion, empathy, care, qualities that are seen as weak but are extremely powerful.” As stylist Tanya Taylor so well instagrammed – in a strawberry bubblegum coat, braids, black suede boots, heart-shaped sunglasses and waving “peace and love” in the middle of Fifth Avenue during the march – we are proud to be pink .“Emancipate yourself from stereotypes and resignifying a color that was imposed on us in the differentiation between the sexes is more daring than making a black rebellion”, says Iza Dezon, Brazil manager at PeclersParis, a French bureau for trend studies. In a sense, the pussyhat is the grandson of the burnt bra. Historical truth be re-established: Feminists protesting the Miss USA pageant in 1968 never set the underwear on fire.

The demonstrators were indeed invited to attend the march, one of many at the time, with bras in their hands. “They embodied the way in which a macho culture imprisons women in standards of beauty,” says the filmmaker. Jennifer Lee, author of the documentary Feminist: Stories from Women’s Liberation, released in 2013.

Family photos, fashion magazines and the movie jackie, currently showing in cinemas, prove the oppression and serial formatting: women with high, pointed breasts and a pestle waist tightened by straps – 6 million pieces sold in North American territory in 1962, considering a population of 47 million women between 20 and over 85 years.

“Setting fire to the catwalk would bring problems with the law, so the activists preferred to burn Playboy magazines, among other items, in what they called Liberating Trash Can.” When the Women’s Liberation Movement, women’s liberation movement exploded, the message was anti-feminine and anti-fashion.

Blush-pink suits in the style of the First Lady Kennedy gave way to unisex looks. Clothes that evoked the dissatisfaction of middle-class housewives and the rigid social roles, theme of The Feminine Mystiquea book by Betty Friedan, which ignited the first flame of this second feminist wave in the United States, published in 1963.

As wrap dress, Diane von Furstenberg was one of the exceptions that defended female power, with its 1974 campaign: “Feel like a woman, wear a dress”. In the 2000s, DVF would adopt the slogan “become the woman you want to be”. Freeminism (game between free, “free”, and feminism), neofeminism, female feminism, intersectional feminism (which recognizes the impact of color, social class, ethnicity on gender discrimination): call the current movement for the right to be respected as a human being what you will. Pink feminism learned from the demands of the 1960s, which in turn learned from the suffragettes, who demanded the right to vote in the early 20th century, and went a step further. “The new feminist wave assimilates the feminine without ceasing to defend that what women want today is freedom to be and appear as they wish”, completes Iza Dezon.

Pink feminism discredits the caricature of the masculine and unloved feminist, a creation of the detractors of the sixties movement and still in vogue today, and makes peace between appearance, whatever it may be, and change. In the 2017 version of the movement, among the posters for Feministas contra Fascistas and Lute como uma Garota, a rhyme left no doubt that the revolution involves dressing: “How I dress is not a yes” (the way I dress is not a yes). is a yes, in allusion to statements that miniskirts are an invitation to sex). “There is a rebellion against appearance codes”, points out Iza Dezon.

Women refuse to be defined and judged by another’s gaze. What they want is to dress for themselves, according to their own wishes, period. “It is high time to stop this ridiculous idea that serious women cannot and should not care about their looks”, defends the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, known for the lecture Let’s all be feminists available on YouTube and also edited as a book.

At the age of 40, Chimamanda was forced to defend the total compatibility between her flag for women’s rights and the right to wear makeup, her intelligence and her appreciation for clothes and bijoux, a lesson learned from her mother. In 2016, the activist accepted an invitation to be the face of makeup line No. 7 by Boots, an English cosmetics brand. In the campaign, she confesses that she forced herself, for a while, to stop beautifying herself and wearing heels.

“I became a false version of myself.” In the opposite way, but following the same principle “I do what I want”, the singer Alicia Keys, who participated in the Women’s March in Washington, launched the #nomakeupmovement from a manifesto in which she declares that she felt the weight of the entertainment industry to always be a chameleon capable of keeping others’ interests alight. “I got tired of the constant judgment of women and I pray to God that this is a revolution,” she says. “Because I don’t want to hide anymore. Not my face, not my ideas, not my soul, not my thoughts, not my dreams, not my battles, not my emotional growth. Anything.” Alicia approaches the creed of slow beauty a movement launched in 2015, which preaches the release of the hysteria caused by the beauty industry for one more lipstick, a peeling or a plastic surgery and defends that beauty is constant care, which involves the dish, well-being and natural cosmetics .

Pink didn’t become the new black overnight. It is at the same time the ultimate response to the political threat against historic female achievements and the reencounter of a new generation with the feminist movement. A kind of enough against so many impositions from all sides. The first step towards making peace with feminism came in 2012, when Chimamanda Ngozi Adicei delivered his historic speech. His speech does not differ from that of Simone de Beauvoir in 1949a time when the French philosopher typed, with long red nails and the same age as the Nigerian, her most famous book today, The Second Sex.

Both argue that gender difference is a cultural imposition – girls are not born sweet, boys are aggressive by nature – and women and men need to work together for social, political and economic equality between the sexes (in addition to ideas, it is curious to note how both share a taste for printed and colorful clothes and turbans strong).

In other words, why do we have to come second? Or, as children under 10 would say, why do men insist on having the right to everything and limiting women’s rights? It is at the time of the launch of Beauvoir’s book, by the way, that the fashion for pink for girls and blue for boys is consecrated. “American industrialists and retailers invented this division theoretically based on consumer purchasing preferences, but the truth is that they could have determined the opposite”, says the historian. Jo B. Paolettiat the University of Maryland, a fashion and gender expert and author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls from the Boys in America (Pink and Blue: Differentiating between Girls and Boys in the United States), published in 2012. Until the mid-19th century, children wore white for an understandable reason for parents: it’s easier to bleach. Pastel colors came into vogue in First World War. Irony of the story, common sense, dictated by trade, said that pink was for boys because it is “a strong and decided color, while blue, delicate and fragile, looks better on girls”.

The year 2013 is considered the moment when the word feminism proudly and fabulously came out of the closet. An excerpt from Chimamanda’s lecture entered, in the writer’s voice, in ***Flawless, one of the tracks from the album Beyonce.

Before the release of the fifth album, the singer gave an interview saying she is a modern feminist, who believes in equality, who refuses to be framed in any label and who loves being a woman. That same year, Indian women took to the streets demanding much more severe punishment for rapists, which triggered a worldwide discussion on the rape culture. In Brazil, demonstrations jumped from social networks to Copacabana beach three years later: 420 panties were spread out on the sand to represent each of the women raped every 72 hours (a year, there are about 50,000). More and more celebrities are taking up the cause. Musician John Legend argued that “all men should be feminists, because the world is better with women’s empowerment”. the presenter Ellen Degeneres Condemned President…