The exhibition I spent the most time in was “Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color.” This exhibition was essentially a timeline of the color pink’s role in fashion. Pink means many different things to many different people and has even been called “the most divisive of colors.” I found this idea of division to be particularly intriguing. There is no doubt that pink has very strong connotations- it has even been used to sum up an entire gender as it evolved to represent femininity (and to some, weakness). The exhibition holds that pink didn’t become a very girly color until the 1950s when gender stereotyping was big in society. Upon further research, I found that this development of pink into a feminine color may be traced back to Nazi Germany, because the Nazis forced known gay men to wear pink badges. I find it kind of astonishing that something as simple as a color can be so divisive. And there is a much larger example of this phenomenon: racism. Skin color has become an aspect of human nature that is extremely controversial. I liked the FIT Pink exhibit because it examined human tendency to assign meaning/feeling to absolutely everything, and in the process, it contributed to debates concerning much larger topics.
