When did pink become a color associated with homosexuals?

[Ike_Witt]

@RealityChuck

That’s a rather unfortunate abbreviation, given the talk of Nazis in this thread. :dubious:

Eats_Crayons meant same sex and not nazis? Ahhh, now I get it.

[Richard_Pearse]

@RealityChuck

That’s a rather unfortunate abbreviation, given the talk of Nazis in this thread. :dubious:

And there I was mentally correcting the sentence to the past tense (not likely to be many SS weddings these days.)

[Loach]

@Richard_Pearse

And there I was mentally correcting the sentence to the past tense (not likely to be many SS weddings these days.)

Only if you are very traditional.

[panache45]

@Leo_Bloom

Also, when/if did pink gradually become superceded by the rainbow symbol?

It was never really superseded; both are in use, sometimes together, like a rainbow flag with a pink triangle in the upper left corner.

[D18]

Cecil’s column mentions the pink/blue/girl/boy affinities coming well into the 20th Century. What I wondered about when I originally read that column is Blue Boy and Pink Girl which have the modern colour/gender affinities. These paintings were done in the late 18th century. (Although I didn’t realize until now that Pinkie wasn’t done by Gainsborough. Ignorance fought.)

At any rate, obviously co-incidences happen, but it does seem that these two paintings certainly hint at a blue/boy; pink/girl affinity relatively long ago. Now, I’m not an expert, so maybe there are plenty of counter-examples, and these just have entered the public consciousness whereas the myriad counter examples haven’t. Can anyone put these paintings into context?

[Dallas_Jones]

@BigT

Huh. I tend to associate pink with straight females, and purple with homosexuals.

No, purple is for old women.

http://labyrinth_3.tripod.com/page59.html

[dotchan]

What, pink’s not for breast cancer awareness? /badumtish

[panache45]

Actually, lavender is the acceptable gay color now, not for triangles, but just as a color. I suspect this may have come about from the erroneous idea that gay people are somewhat androgynous . . . and lavender is midway between pink and light blue.

[Una_Persson]

@D18

Cecil’s column mentions the pink/blue/girl/boy affinities coming well into the 20th Century. What I wondered about when I originally read that column is Blue Boy and Pink Girl which have the modern colour/gender affinities. These paintings were done in the late 18th century. (Although I didn’t realize until now that Pinkie wasn’t done by Gainsborough. Ignorance fought.)

At any rate, obviously co-incidences happen, but it does seem that these two paintings certainly hint at a blue/boy; pink/girl affinity relatively long ago. Now, I’m not an expert, so maybe there are plenty of counter-examples, and these just have entered the public consciousness whereas the myriad counter examples haven’t. Can anyone put these paintings into context?

Cecil looked into this; IIRC there were numerous examples which he found of boys and girls in a variety of colours throughout the 1500’s through early 1900’s. To help the Big Guy out, I also searched through my online art gallery (which has about 35,000 works, mostly from 1650 through 1950) and could not come up with a consensus with respect to pre-1900 colours for children.