![]() Members of Gen Z think differently about gender than their predecessors: They are, for instance, are more likely to identify as trans or nonbinary and to believe that there are more than two genders than any previous generation. “I think for Gen Z, maybe even Millennials, pink is becoming more of a neutral,” she says. “The world is just becoming more gender fluid,” says Schumacher, though she cautions that pink still has different meanings for different age groups. ![]() “The pink pussy hats were the most feminized moment of political activism I’ve seen in my adult life.”Īs pink has become more popular, it’s figured more prominently in men’s fashion, as have other symbols of femininity. “The ramped-up vocal misogyny of Donald Trump…lots of women decided to own these symbols of femininity that had been grounds of disparagement,” she says. Pink became an emblem for a more aggressive power, according to Rebecca Jordan-Young, the chair of the women's, gender, and sexuality studies department at Barnard College (Gerwig’s alma mater). ![]() Think back to 2017 and all the pussy hats at the Women’s March paired with rallying cries like “pussy grabs back” in response to former President Trump’s notorious Access Hollywood tape. The next year, pink took on a new identity. Read More: How Greta Gerwig Got Barbie –From the Clothes to the Dream House–Just Right Not coincidentally, Millennial Pink’s peak popularity around 2016 coincided with Hillary Clinton’s bid for President. There was even a brief time where various interior design blogs argued that pink was the new neutral color to consider for your living room. A softer hue, Millennial pink, dominated the marketing of makeup company Glossier and period-underwear company Thinx, a nod toward their “made by powerful women, for powerful women” ethos. Pink got a girl-boss makeover in the mid-2010s, according to Schumacher. When Regina George insists, “On Wednesdays, we wear pink,” she uses the color as a status symbol distinguishing the cool (and vapid) girls from the mathletes. Cher’s pink-hued closet represents her obsession with fashion-until she finds new purpose and gives away many of her clothes. She ends the movie in her all-black graduation gown. When Elle Woods decides to wear a pink leather skirt suit for move-in day to Harvard Law School, the audience is meant to chuckle at her apparent frivolousness. That movie consciously references the aesthetic sensibilities of iconic female films from their childhoods- Clueless, Legally Blonde, and Mean Girls-to draw parallels between Barbie’s journey of self-discovery and those of other seemingly ditzy, fashion-obsessed blondes who found deeper meaning in life by the end of the film. The perception of pink has changed radically just in the lifetimes of the Millennial women who flocked to see Gerwig’s film. It’s perhaps unfair to give Barbie all the credit. Read More: We’re Ignoring the Real Reason Barbie Might Dominate the Box Office Pink's politics have changed in the last decade ![]() “This is the kind of cultural phenomenon that launches 1,000 dissertations.” “The movie is reclaiming pink,” says Jo Paoletti, a professor emerita at the University of Maryland who specializes in fashion history and consumer culture and wrote a book on the pink-blue divide. Instead it’s an expression of empowerment. With each new pink partnership, the color seems to shed the notion that it’s exclusively reserved for girly girls or that it’s in any way unserious. Shades of pink also cropped up last year at Valentino’s runway show and on celebs like Zendaya, Florence Pugh, and Anne Hathaway. Pantone announced in January that its color of the year would be Viva Magenta, a more purplish shade of pink than the one associated with the doll. Jada Schumacher, a color specialist and professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, argues that corporate entities beyond Mattel set the ubiquity of pink in motion long before the movie premiered. To understand the meaning of pink right now is to study a marketing behemoth but also to recognize the societal changes that have been happening over time. As I scroll past yet another bubblegum onesie tangentially tied to the movie, I wonder, Do I incorporate Gerwig’s slightly subversive version of pink into my daughter’s life or is it still too restricting? Is pink’s rising popularity, especially among men, a signal that the gender binary is falling, or does it make the divide between men and women all the more defined? Put more plainly: Is pink still a “girl color,” and is it bad if it is? But it’s a question I’ve been wrestling with anew in the wake of reporting a Barbie cover story, and living in her pink world in the months preceding and following its publication, while simultaneously growing a baby girl inside me. It’s a color that many people either embrace or reject based on their concept of what it connotes. ![]()
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