THE COLORS OF FEMINISM
Maite Méndez Baiges
March 8, 2023
The feminist cause is a revolution, the most important of the 20th century according to Hobsbawn. And when I was young I learned an important lesson: that revolutions are not won with weapons, they are achieved with ideas. Symbols are inseparable companions of ideas; and for symbols, colors. All political struggle is exercised in different fields and one of them is precisely the symbolic arena. Symbols are not frivolous or expendable, they serve to unite and to separate, to strengthen or weaken. There are those who are willing to give their lives for a symbol and there are those who are willing to kill for it. Dressing in a color can be a way to identify each other, and also to differentiate from others or others.
Within the universe of visual symbols, color plays a major role. Color is the most elusive formal element of visual and artistic language. And it is also a signifier in its purest state, since it reveals the arbitrary nature of the sign, the fact that signs only signify by convention. The colors are polysemic. The same color can mean different things for different cultures, historical moments, people. Their meanings are a cultural and historical construction, regardless of the fact that all humans have the same color perception organs. When we review them historically, we realize that there is hardly any agreement on what the colors mean: those meanings can even be antithetical to different latitudes, cultures or times. The meanings of colors are social, cultural and historical constructions; because visual perception is itself cultural.
Just think about the arbitrariness of the two colors that allude to the binary condition of the genders: pink and blue. Some believe that the preference of today’s girls for pink is an innate, unconditioned trait of the female gender. But the truth is that in the West for centuries blue was the feminine color par excellence, and pink, which is nothing more than a red reduced with white, that of the masculine. This is so because red has traditionally been associated with ideas of strength, blood, bravery, energy, that is, with virile notions. Pink, since it is a less aggressive red, was attributed to male babies. Blue was instead, and also for a long time, a feminine color associated with ideas of purity, delicacy, and virginity. The origin of this association is due to the fact that the virgin’s cloak is blue, and this is how Western painting has usually represented it. It is already in the 20th century when these meanings are reversed.
Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, blue from lapis lazuli was one of the most expensive pigments, which is why its use in painting and clothing was highly restricted, reserved for the most valuable, such as the virgin’s mantle. That luxurious character also had the purple of Tire, a color very close to the violet, mauve or purple of feminism.
The palette of feminism is mainly made up of the colors violet, green, white, yellow and pink.
The suffragettes used as their emblem the triad formed by purple, white and green. In fact, they created a true suffragette brand with it in an unprecedented marketing operation. They applied it to textile production and to all kinds of objects and accessories: brooches, jewelry, medals, pennants, etc. The tricolor emblem appeared, for example, on brooches whose design was inspired by the bars of the prison in which some of them ended up locked up, thus turning ridicule into pride, in an operation to invert the offensive in which feminism is already very trained. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence explained the meaning of her symbology thus: “Purple, the color of sovereigns, symbolizes the royal blood that runs through the veins of each suffragette, symbolizes her awareness of freedom and dignity. White symbolizes honesty in private and political lives. And green, hope for a new beginning.
He violet, mauve, lilac, purple, is the color par excellence of the feminist movement. Your name in English purple, It relates it to purple, one of the most appreciated colors in antiquity. Royal or imperial purple is a tint between purplish-red and purple. Today it is unknown what its true hue was, which oscillates between different shades of red or violet. It was the most prestigious and expensive pigment among the Romans, reserved for their elites. Produced by the Phoenicians, it was obtained from a mollusk called Murex brandaris, of the substance that he secretes when he feels threatened or is attacked. It has been calculated that about 9,000 mollusks were needed to produce one gram, which is why it was a luxury item.
Various legends circulate about the reasons why violet is the color of the feminist movement. The most widespread is that it is the memory of the fire on March 25, 1911 at a shirt factory in New York, the Triangle Shirtwaist, where 146 workers died, 123 of them women. It is linked to the birth of International Women’s Day. It is a milestone in the history of the international labor movement, because it served to highlight the inhumane conditions of textile work, in the hands of immigrant women, or even children. One of its effects was the creation of an international union of textile workers. The exact reasons that caused the fire are not known, but it is known that the workers of the Triangle had called protests for low wages. Legend has it that the smoke was purple, due to the pigments that were used to dye the fabrics of the shirts that this company manufactured.
Today it is not only the international symbol of the feminist movement, but we also use the word violet, purple or purple in everyday language to identify different aspects of the feminist struggle. For example, “purple capitalism” is spoken of with a critical spirit, to denounce the use of feminist slogans with openly capitalist interests. Large fashion corporations produce T-shirts with phrases like “We should all be feminists” without us knowing for sure if they meet the principles of “decent work” among garment workers in the so-called global South. In English the expression is also used purple washing to allude to a spurious use of feminist arguments, or, to use a Spanish proverb, on the occasions when someone remembers Santa Bárbara when it thunders.
He blanco, For its part, it has also been associated with feminism since the days of British suffragism. In their demonstrations they created an authentic white tide, wearing this color in their outfits as a sign of purity and pacifism. Subsequently, it has remained the color of American Democrats, at least since Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman to enter this country’s Congress, wore white the day she was sworn in in 1969. It was also the color of the Geraldine Ferrao’s outfit, the first US vice-presidential candidate, in 1984, when she lost the election to Ronald Reagan along with Walter F. Mondale.
The North American Democrats have dressed in white during the presidency of Donald Trump. The Democratic congresswomen wore this color on the day of the State of Union speech given by the president; It was that same day that he refused to greet Nancy Pelosi, who, in response, tore up the pages on which the text of such a polite president was written.
White is also the color of the handkerchiefs of the mothers and grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, a garment born from a diaper, personalized with the name of their disappeared children and grandchildren, which appear embroidered with an exquisite cross stitch of genuinely feminine look.
The color yellow of the mimosas, for its part, is perhaps the most gallant and flirtatious color of feminism. Since 1946 it is the tone par excellence of the Italian March 8,
from women’s day. Its causes are often attributed to the fact that the mimosa blooms at this time, to the fact that it is an affordable plant, which grows even in the most inhospitable places, since it refers to delicacy but also to vitality, strength and combat.
In 2017, the Women’s March in Washington and other American cities were dyed with a rosa strong and striking against the policies of Donald Trump. The protagonist of that pink tide was a little hat that was baptized with the name of Pussy Hatreferring to one of Donald Trump’s many derogatory comments towards women, the infamous “grab them from the pussy”. The initiative came from two women, Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman, who decided to launch the Pussy Hat Project, with the creation of free patterns so that everyone could knit by themselves, and better if in a group, those pink hats. It is a garment that condenses numerous appropriations of derogatory elements to provoke their investment. Play ironically with the expression Pussycat or “kitten”. And it causes a resemantization of the color pink attributed to “weak” traits of femininity, such as delicacy, care, sweetness, compassion or love to turn them into positive traits of women, their struggle and their strength. Woven into some of these hats was the expression that the president had used against his political opponent during the electoral campaign: “Nasty woman”. And even a pink woven vulva, the Uterine Wall, could be seen as a humorous and effective weapon against Trump’s ferocious immigration policy.
These colors have been added in recent years by the verde of the Argentine tide in defense of legal abortion. It is the color that dyes the scarves of its supporters, a smooth, vital and strong green for a traditionally delicate garment, whose versatility produces the effect of destroying its weak connotations. In the opinion of Tuna Market: “It is a green handkerchief until it matures. It is not an environmental campaign green, it is not ruled out that it is the green of hope, a word that must be recovered from prudishness so that it can mean that another story is possible. Its green is not ‘naturalistic’, but denaturing”, because it intends to unmask the supposed natural character of the differences imposed for centuries: “differences from a biology manual, binary classifications, sexual mandates, stereotypes, religious terror, grids to insert honesty in the desire, etc.”
Lastly, it is necessary that we not overlook two other colors related to feminism, although they are by no means exclusive to this fight. I mean the reye and blackeither. Red so that we do not forget the socialist and communist origins of what is celebrated on March 8, the struggle of the female proletariat for their rights. And black because it is a (non) color that often appears in different women’s struggles, given that they often only occur for tragic reasons. Black is the color of the Women in Black, international movement of pacifist women, born in Israel in 1988 against the occupation and against the violation of human rights by the Israeli army in Palestinian territories. Black was also the color chosen by the Sevillian women who, on May 24, 2013, paid tribute to Andalusian women who suffered reprisals during the Spanish Civil War. That day, with their mourning attire, on the reproduction of the Queipo de Llano tombstone, a couple of Sevillian women marked an energetic tap dance before an audience also in black and wrapped in a silence as sepulchral as dignified, against indignity and the infamy.
If we arrange in a certain order, on a rectangle, all the colors mentioned here, we obtain a kind of flag similar to the one brandished by the LGBT collective as a symbol of pride. A flag without a country, a flag of peace and diversity, a flag that is also a symbol of a revolution.