Liberated from the “feminine care” aisle, you take a little pink box into the bathroom. You remove the device from its packaging, urinate, and wait for those tell-tale pink lines. As an expectant parent, everyone will wonder, girl or boy? Pink or blue? Because when it comes to the color pink, whether used traditionally, humorously, or ironically, pink remains emblematic of the double X chromosome. It is associated with babies, little girls, femininity, softness, and superficiality; hence the “feminine care” aisle’s pink palette.

Pink is associated with genitals, sexual intercourse, and sexuality. While the pink packaging on that pregnancy test don’t tell you if you are having a boy or a girl, they do tell you one thing: pink is a physically charged color. Pink is a sex symbol.

In the 1980s, with the advent of prenatal testing, parents quickly became fixated on their child’s sex (or really, their genitalia), and this foreknowledge fueled existing sexist color coding. In 1985, Luvs introduced pink and blue disposable diapers that featured slightly different padding for “boys” (in-front) and “girls” (in the middle). Prior to 1900, most infants in the United States wore white clothing, regardless of sex. These white ensembles signified a child’s age, while colorful accents were often based off of a child’s physical characteristics—brunettes wore pink; blondes dressed up in blue.

With the twentieth century’s infatuation with colorful baby clothes, the emphasis shifted from age to sex. As the blogger “Distracted Daddy” wrote in a post on his daughter’s all pink outfits, “hopefully once she is no longer a baby and any stranger can guess her gender at forty yards away, we can move on from this color.”

Pink, as a color in fashion, first appeared in the French royal court of the eighteenth century. From the Palace of Versailles this color spread throughout the Western World and was regarded not as an infantile color, but a “courtly and royal” pigment appropriate for clothing elite men and women alike. Ascending the throne in 1715, Louis XV’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour, cultivated pink as her favorite color.

In her portrait by François Boucher, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, is at her toilette in the act of “pinking.” This facial flush, usually associated with sexual arousal or intense emotion is, however, painted on—Madame Pompadour’s compact of blush and powdered brush reveal that her appearance is cosmetic and manufactured, however desirable. 

Following the synthetic production of very bright, almost garish pinks, pink became a color at home in both “high” and “low” culture. Costume designers throughout the 1950s and ‘60s utilized pink in musicals as chromatic eye-candy, outfitting the sexually confident female or traditionally feminine woman in pink clothing.

The 1957 romantic comedy Funny Face, features a stalwart magazine editor directing “women everywhere to ‘think pink.’” In addition to handbags and shampoo, “think pink’s” song and dance sequence included an homage to Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing (1767), with a slow-motion shot of a girl on a swing dressed head-to-toe in—you guessed it, pink.

A positive pink theory was studied in the Baker-Miller experiment. Baker-Miller, a shade of pink created by mixing red and white, was painted in the holding cells of naval facilities in 1970 by the biosocial researcher Alexander Schauss. Also known as “Drunk Tank Pink,” the experiment showed that the color lowered prisoners’ heart rates and decreased physical aggression. Centuries later, scientists and social historians remain obsessed with pink’s capacity to activate the human psyche, or produce psycho-emotional responses.

Also known as “Drunk Tank Pink,” the experiment showed that the color lowered prisoners’ heart rates and decreased physical aggression.
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Hollywood’s infatuation with the potentiality of technicolor was one part of larger national sentiment; America was “in the pink” with postwar prosperity, giddy that the war was over and ready for some serious shopping. The same year Funny Face premiered on the silver screen, Hollywood’s bombshell, Jayne Mansfield, purchased “the Pink Palace,” complete with a ceiling-to-floor pink shag carpeted bathroom. But Mansfield wasn’t the only celebrity being enveloped in pink. Singer, songwriter, and actor, Elvis Presley, not only wore pink suits, jackets, and trousers, he also drove a pink car and slept in a pink bedroom.

Sex icons, both male and female, were channeling pink’s promise of prosperity and positivity. When asked why pink, Mansfield reflected, “because it made me happy.” This “pink effect” materialized at a party celebrating Mansfield’s pink swimming pool, in which she filled it to the brim with pink champagne.

Within that year, An Affair to Remember starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr premiered in cinemas with a pink opening title sequence and a featured specialty cocktail: pink champagne. The film begins with Grant and Kerr on a cruise from Europe to New York, and despite being engaged to other people, they decide to have an affair on board with all the characteristics of pink champagne, “fun, light, and enjoyable.”

But even with the nation’s collective intoxication with this rosy hue, pink was, and remains, a divisive color with contentiousness, coloring newspapers throughout the mid-twentieth century.

In 1950, Helen Gahagan Douglas, a blue-blooded Broadway star turned politician, would go head-to-head against Richard Nixon for a seat on the U.S. senate in the state of California. During the political campaign—due to her close ties with communist sympathizers within the movie-industry—a San Jose newspaper reported that if Douglas was not exactly red, she was “decidedly pink.” Pinko quickly became a noun for someone soft on communism.

Throughout the election, Nixon’s team printed damaging propaganda in opposition to Douglas on pink paper. These “pink sheets,” along with Los Angeles Daily News’ printing of the nickname “Pink Lady,” colored Douglas’ political career. Tricky Dicky famously declared that Douglas was, “pink right down to her underwear;” his off-color comment positioned pink as both a political pejorative (communist sympathizer) and illicitly sexual.

In 1991, Susan G. Komen handed out pink ribbons to runners in the New York City Survivor Race. The ribbon, designed by Evelyn Lauder of the Estée Lauder Companies in collaboration with an editor at Self magazine, was influenced by HIV and AIDS organizations’ red ribbon. That same year, 1991, the Visual AIDS Artists’ Caucus created “The Ribbon Project.”

The artist driven organization had tried to stay away from colors traditionally associated with homosexuality, but in Germany, male sex workers were referred to as Rosarote, which literally translates to “pink-red.” This colorful nickname was also the inspiration behind the pink triangle assigned to gay and lesbian inmates in concentration camps during World War II.

Over the years, the connotation of pink with the sexually transgressive has been reclaimed by activists (queer and straight), into a symbol of resistance. Yet, Gayle Sulik, author of Pink Ribbon Blues: How Breast Cancer Culture Undermines Women’s Health sees pink as a reinforcer of  “the notion that breast cancer is a danger only because it threatens women’s sexual identity and men’s access to their breasts.” 

Breast cancer’s pink ribbon not only defines it as a woman’s disease, it emphasizes notions of traditional femininity as it relates to the female body, specifically the nipples on a white human female’s breasts. As Gemma Tarlach writes, “nowhere, perhaps aside from Hooters, is the equation more ingrained than in the breast cancer industry…woman=breast=pink.”  

This juxtaposition of pink’s association with heightened femininity and underlying sexuality was embraced in “millennial pink.” The early 2000s saw female empowerment books employ pink in their cover art at around the same moment women were being taught to wear pink on Wednesdays.

This “ironic pink” attempted to extract the sugary sweetness of Malibu Barbie and replace it with the girlboss attitude of the Plastics from Mean Girls. Despite the rebrand, millennial pink’s not-for-little girls-ness carries with it the color’s storied sexual past.

On January 21st, 2017, 500,000 men and women, young and old, walked in The Women’s March on Washington, D.C. Throughout the day, news channels and social media sites broadcasted images showcasing the diversity of the march’s participants, but the photos also captured the movement’s clearest demarcation of empowerment and protest: the color pink. The leading article of clothing that contributed to this “pink effect” was the Pussyhat.

When asked about the pussy hat’s signature color, co-founders Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman, said, “wearing pink together is a powerful statement that we are unapologetically feminine and we unapologetically stand for women’s rights.” But not everyone felt the choice of pink, or the “pussy hat,” was the ideal icon for the Women’s March. Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak wrote a public address to her “sisters,” stating, that the “cute and fun” color threatened to trivialize women’s issues

In an effort to belittle President Donald Trump’s proposed Southern border wall, a group of interns at the architecture film Estudio 3.14 created 3D renderings of the wall. The “Prison-Wall Project,” allowed the public to see just what Mr. Trump’s “big,” “beautiful,” and “physical,” wall might look like. The designers’ concept? A bright pink wall that doubles as a prison.

As the President stated that Mexico will pay for the wall, the designers’ model pays homage to the Mexican architect Luis Barragán, most known for his pink-colored geometric buildings throughout Mexico. Barragán once referred to his pink floorplans as “architectural stripteases.” At Estudio 3.14, the pink design is not only nationalistic, its color undresses the American dream. It is the embodiment of Trump’s wall in all “its gorgeous perversity.”  

Pink, as a wall, or a mark on a pregnancy test, is a contentious line carrying alone within it the diacritical distinction pink/blue. Girl or boy. As the beauty expert Eve Nelson wrote in her novel, Take It From Eve, “while it’s true that she [a female infant] cannot actively appreciate a pink ribbon…these things set the mood.” This belief in the formation of a feminine personality from early childhood exposure to pink, was condemned throughout the uni-sex era of the 1970s by mothers who viewed the gendered clothing of their early twentieth century upbringing through the lens of second-wave feminism. Despite these anti-pink crusaders, pink’s stereotypes remain salient, even when contradicted in practice.

The Pink Tax, named after the color of products that are marketed to attract women and girls, refers to the price difference for female-targeted commodities compared to male or “gender-neutral” goods. On average, products for women or girls cost seven percent more than comparable products for men and boys. The Bic pen “For Her” is just one example of this prevailing sexist consumer culture. Designed for women, with a comfortable rubber grip for “female hands,” the pen demonstrates pink’s complex cultural history built, in large part on, sexual biology.

This “pink double-standard” found adoring fans in the American animated television series Jem and the Holograms. By day, Jerrica Benton was the owner of a music company, by night, she was Jem, lead singer of the Holograms. On television and on toy shelves, Jerrica and Jem wore pink.

Within the show’s narrative, pink linked Jerrica and Jem’s secret identities, and boldly showed pink as a color like none other—an innocent, yet honest representation of pink’s dualism in art, fashion, cosmetics, politics and pop culture. This notion of a color having two sides (natural and unnatural, virginal and virile, or male and female) was parodied in a 2005 Robot Chicken episode where Jem, dressed in her iconic pink wrap dress, is caught using a urinal in the men’s restroom.

As a color frequently found in flowers, alcohol and sweets, quartz crystals, a setting sunscape, genitalia, skin tones and discoloration, pink’s connotations take inspiration and innuendos from the physical world—it is a color with physicality. The use of pink as a current political statement in response to our contemporary government or as the latest trend, draws upon the versatility of pink’s associations, it’s intrinsic connection to the human condition, and its ability to arouse our sense of smell, alter our outlook, tantalize our taste buds, evoke our childhoods, or elicit a sense of touch.

It’s truly an outrageous color.

This week we tracked down Danielle Muscato. She’s the activist who fired off a series of tweets in response to Trump’s latest Twitter tantrum because Alec Baldwin impersonated him on SNL. Muscato’s tweets were picked up by first by Groop Speak and Occupy Democrats, followed by Mashable, HuffPo, and NBC News. (Tweets and handle published here with Danielle’s permission.)

Jesus fucking Christ, @realDonaldTrump. You are the president-elect. Pick your fucking battles, man. You’re embarrassing yourself. — Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump Baldwin’s impression isn’t “Sad.” You know what’s sad? In 7 wks you’ll be responsible for 330m lives & you can’t think of — Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump (cont) anything better to do than tweet abt a comedy show. You know that actual lives are at stake, right? You’re pathetic. — Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump This is not a joke, Donald. Don’t you have anything better to do? Are you so narcissistic that a PARODY is your priority? — Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump Do you know how many trans people were murdered since Election Day? Do you know how many veterans killed themselves?

— Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump Do you know how many children went to bed tonight without enough food to eat? Do you even care? What is *wrong* with you?! — Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump No, of course you don’t know those things. You don’t even know what a “blind trust,” and you call yourself a businessman.

— Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump You’re pathetic. You ran for prez for attention. You are a fake,a fraud. You never wanted to win anyway; we can all see it.

— Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump You are not fooling anyone. You’re scared, and overwhelmed, and you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing. And it shows — Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump You think we’re all too polite, too aghast, to call you out. I see through you, Donny. I’m calling you out. You’re a joke. — Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump With every fiber of my being, I am disgusted by you. And you know what the real secret is? You’re disgusted by you, too. — Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump That’s why you surround yourself with gold, and beautiful women that you objectify. You know you’re a loser, so you try to — Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump make yourself feel better, feel successful, authoritative, with things, and money. You are an impostor. You are a fraud. — Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump I’m ashamed of you. The world is ashamed. You spout NONSENSE, millions of illegal voters?! Even you don’t believe it — absurd — Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump Do you think we’re stupid? You think we don’t know what you’re doing? Trying to control the narrative, get your followers.. — Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump ..to distrust the media, the polls, news reporters, so that they must turn to YOU for what’s true, what’s real? There’s a — Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump ..name for that. It’s “propaganda.” We know what you’re doing. We will not allow you to suppress votes with this nonsense. — Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

@realDonaldTrump We will not allow you to trample our civil rights! We will not allow you to destroy the progress we’ve made! WE WILL RESIST — Danielle Muscato (@DanielleMuscato) December 4, 2016

Give us a quick bit of background about yourself.

My name is Danielle Muscato and I’m a 32-year-old transgender woman from Missouri. I’m a civil rights activist, writer, public speaker, and musician. I’ve been an activist since 2011, mostly focusing on the separation of religion and government and fighting discrimination against atheists, but also many other areas of progressive social and political interest, such as abortion access, science education, Black Lives Matter, and more.

What was going on when you decided to reply to Trump’s SNL tweets?

I was, and remain, angry and aghast at Trump for failing to take his job seriously. In seven weeks, this man will be the only thing standing between peace and launching nuclear weapons. I consider it a national emergency that the president-elect can’t even be trusted to handle his own Twitter account.

I was, and remain, angry at Trump for failing to take his job seriously.
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Is there any additional info you want to add around your tweets? (140 characters can be limiting!)

We must resist. Bottom line, resist. That’s why yesterday, I was using the hashtag #RESIST. The day we accept ANY of this as normal, we have already lost. Fascism accumulates power by pushing people, by testing us, by testing boundaries. We must call him out literally every time he says or proposes something that is unacceptable; we must actually label it as “unacceptable”; and we must demand change. From access to health care, to LGBTQ rights, to international relations, to so much more, complacency is literally death in this case, for potentially millions of people around the world, and also for people here in the USA. If you do not already, I encourage everyone reading this to start identifying, personally, as an activist, and to work toward that end accordingly. Resistance, en masse, is our only hope.

What has the response to your tweets been so far? Positive? Negative? Any Trump supporters flooding your feed?

Well, I’m actually suspended from my Facebook account for three days, because a bunch of people — I assume Trump supporters — filed community standards reports against me, and Facebook’s algorithm automatically locks you out if enough people do that. But aside from that, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. As a civil rights activist, I was already verified on Twitter before this went viral, but I went from 3,500 followers to 90,000 overnight. I’m absolutely thrilled that my message has resonated with so many people. I think these things simply needed to be said, and I absolutely intend to use this platform to continue fighting for good. I’m sitting on literally thousands of emails, and going through them as quickly as I can. I’d guess that perhaps 1 out of 200 or fewer messages has been negative. The negative ones are easy to spot, because of all the spelling errors and anti-trans slurs.

I absolutely intend to use this platform to continue fighting for good.
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How do you feel about your portrayal in the media concerning your tweets? (I noticed, for instance, that many platforms simply stated “this woman’s Twitter rant” without naming you or providing any background information.) Did sites ask permission before republishing your Tweets?

Some did, some did not. I don’t mind. Twitter is public; as long as they link to my feed, it’s just more visibility. My goal is to spread the message that we must resist Trump, and media coverage amplifies the signal.

What are you working on right now? Any projects our readers can support?

I’m a full-time civil rights activist, and I’m always working on new talks for conferences, universities, and local groups, in addition to writing, and doing media appearances, event organizing, and formal debates. If you are interested in supporting my work, I do have a Patreon, and I’m also available for bookings and freelance writing through my website.

Where can folks find you online (besides Twitter)?

I’m on all the major social media sites under Danielle Muscato, including a Facebook page, an Instagram feed, and a YouTube channel. You can also reach me through my website at www.daniellemuscato.com. I get a lot of email and I can’t always reply to everyone, but I do my very best to read them and respond as much as I can! I love hearing from people.