As lawmakers take their seats in the Capitol building Tuesday evening for President Donald Trump’s address, some members of Congress — members of the Democratic Women’s Caucus — will be dressed in a color seldom seen on the political stage: bright pink.
New Mexico Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, chair for the 96-member caucus, explained to Time magazine that the pink is meant to “signal our protest of Trump’s policies which are negatively impacting women and families.”
Women lawmakers have long used fashion as a form of protest. At Trump’s State of the Union addresses during his first term, Democratic congresswomen wore bright white in homage to suffragists in the early 1900s. Pink — a divisive color often derided as frivolous and weak for generations — is an even bolder choice. The embrace of such a traditionally feminine color by women with considerable political power makes a stunning example of subversive dressing.
Follow along and watch live as Trump addresses a joint session of Congress for the first time in his second term.
Although contemporary associations with pink are just that, contemporary, the color has a well-established and entrenched association with femininity — and, in turn, weakness. Consider the names used to identify different shades of pink: baby, ballet-slipper, petal, porcelain. These qualifiers are gentle, soft and delicate. In literature and film, pink is often used to signal sensitivity, delicacy, femininity and sexuality for women. For men, it is almost always negative. In “The Great Gatsby,” for example, the titular character, Jay Gatsby, wears a pink suit not as a daring fashion choice but as a faux pas used to illustrate his lack of sophistication and social cachet.
Before the mid-1800s, it is well documented that men, women and children of all genders would wear pink with little cultural significance. It was then that Western men adopted darker hued outfits and women embraced brighter colors like pink, explains Valerie Steel in her 2018 book “Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color.” This trend continued until the 1950s, an infamously regressive time in the United States, which ushered in the rigid gendering of color we still see today: pink is for girls and blue is for boys.
Before the mid-1800s, it is well documented that men, women and children of all genders would wear pink with little cultural significance.
In 2017, the day after Trump’s first inauguration, women took to the streets across the world in protest of Trump’s misogynistic language and his then-suggested legislation. Roe vs. Wade was still the law of the land then. Many members of “The Women’s March” protesters wore bright pink knit hats called “pussyhats,” named in direct reference to Trump’s woefully sexist infamous 2005 remarks. But even then the choice of pink was controversial. A Washington Post op-ed urged protesters to “back away from the pink” and to take the march “seriously.”
Pink is not just a color of resistance for women and feminists. Consider the pink triangle. During World War II, Nazis used the upside-down pink triangle it to mark gay men and transgender women for particularly brutal treatment while imprisoned in concentration camps. Beginning in the 1970s, queer liberation advocates subverted the pink triangle, reversing the orientation used by the Nazis, and began using it as a symbol of self-identity, community and activism. It still is. On Tuesday night, when Trump stands at the podium under the domed ceiling of the Capitol, he will see women dressed in pink standing in front of him. He won’t care. This administration cares little for symbolism and even less for women. Indeed, outside of the Capitol, much has been made of how ineffectual political dressing is. I see the negative comments on my own sartorial columns. What good does this do, constituents rightfully ask, when laws are being enacted that have real negative effects? Still, these pink outfits, steeped in subversive symbolism and made significant by generations of sexism and organized resistance against it, are a symbol of unity, a visible show of resistance, and, certainly most importantly, a sign to every American watching Tuesday night that these lawmakers haven’t given up. Amid navy tailoring, tomato red neckties and perhaps some inappropriately casual baseball caps, the pink will stand out. The color and the clothes aren’t for Trump, or Vance, or Musk. They are for the women watching at home who remain unwilling to fade into the background, who don’t want to accept a single definition of who they are, what they stand for, nor the choices they are allowed to make, and certainly not the colors they are allowed to wear.
Hannah Holland
Hannah Holland is a producer for MSNBC's "Velshi" and editor for the "Velshi Banned Book Club." She writes for MSNBC Daily. 
