Karly Chisholm
Reading Response: The Second Lives of Pussy Hats
After reading The Second Lives of Pussy Hats, a collection of women’s memoirs about their pussy cat hats that no longer need to be worn as the Women’s March is over, I have been able to contemplate the importance of symbolism in our developed society. The hats that were left over from the women’s march are very strong symbols of female power and the fight for equality in all aspects of life. They stand for unity and protest and standing up to what is wrong, a freedom of speech and the freedom to protest. All of this meaning being given to such an everyday commodity, a simple pink hat. If the hats aren’t going to be worn to another protest, they can be redesigned. One woman has the right idea, and she claimed, “I’ve since modified it into a stuffed pink pussycat doll for my 2-year-old daughter.”, which directly exemplifies the idea that an object is not valued directly based on looks or function, but the system in which it exists.
The Pussy Hats carry value because they exist in a system of female empowerment within a greater system of the patriarchy. The Pussy Hats carry emotional and psychological comfort and confidence to women who want to wear it when people like Doug Jones are elected, or who need to wear it when Donald Trump does anything awful (like exist as our president), as David Derbes states, “I wear it when something big breaks about Donald Trump, or if I’m just feeling like I’d like to give him a middle-finger salute (which, frankly, is pretty often). I wore it the Wednesday morning after Doug Jones was elected, for example.”I find the very compelling subject of the ways in which we as humans interact in objects of our society based on the everchanging factors that affect us.
