#Era of Exploration

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Could pink be Earth’s oldest color? That’s the implication of a 2018 study that found bright-pink pigments in 1.1 billion-year-old rocks — thanks to the fossils of the billions of tiny cyanobacteria that once dominated oceans.

The natural world has long been painted with every permutation of pink — whether embedded deep in ancient rock, sported by shrimp-hungry flamingoes, or simply lining the shores of Bermuda’s pink-sand beaches.

And yet the color carries a lot of cultural baggage.

As pink made the jump from nature’s palette to human adornment, it gathered connotations of colonialism, beauty, power, and gender.

How did pink become such a cultural flashpoint? As the world takes a revitalized interest in the hot-pink planet inhabited by Barbie, here’s a short history of the compelling color.

Admiration for pink in the ancient world

Early humans quickly transitioned from admiring pink in the natural world to attempting to wear it.

For example, in the Andes Mountains about 9,000 years ago, fierce hunters in what is now Peru wore tailored leather clothing with a pink hue thanks to red ochre, an iron oxide pigment that is one of the oldest natural pigments used by humans.

Humans weren’t content just to smear this pigment on cave walls or use it while tanning their leather garments.

As far back as ancient Egypt, humans used ochre to tint their lips and cheeks.

When applied to human skin, the red pigment created a blush-like pink that onlookers associated with love, sexuality, and beauty.

Lookalike concoctions prevailed around the world, employing everything from crushed strawberries to red amaranth.

The color of cosmetics—and colonialism

Though the word’s etymology is unknown, the word “pink” was used to describe the color in the 18th century.

By then, pink had become inextricably tied with colonialism — as demand for the pigment for cosmetics drove Europeans to harvest natural resources in other parts of the world.

For example, in a bid to make pinkish pigments from the bark and red sap of brazilwood trees, European traders forced enslaved workers to cut down so many of Brazil’s eponymous trees that the country was left deforested and the tree nearly driven extinct.

During this Era of Exploration, consumers also got their pink cheeks and lips from other pigments like carmine, derived from cochineal insects harvested in Central and South America under similar conditions.

Meanwhile, the color also had a more literal association with colonialism:

During this time, the British Empire grew so massive that the color pink — which mapmakers used to mark its territories worldwide — dominated the world map.

Pink becomes a bona fide fashion craze

As red tints became more accessible and cheaper, 18th-century European aristocrats indulged a passion for pink.

Art historian Michel Pastoureau writes that “the most privileged classes of European society wanted pastels, halftones, and the newest innovations in color shades in order to distinguish themselves from the middle classes, who now had access to bright, strong, and reliable colors.”

Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV of France during the 1740s and 1750s, used the color as a signature.

The artists who painted her and created fine objects for her many homes used pink in all their designs, even her carriages, and she helped further popularize the hue throughout Europe.

The emergence of synthetic dyes in the mid-19th century — which gave rise to the purple-pink color known as mauve — made pink more accessible than ever before.

By the 1930s, bright pink had become a bona fide fashion craze.

Avant-garde fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli made “shocking pink” her signature color, helping spread the vogue for women’s wear.

It worked: By 1935, even local newspapers like the News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, were declaring that “PINK IS FAVORITE.”

And in 1939, a royal commentator wrote in London’s Daily Telegraph that pink was so popular, it was nearly ubiquitous for both bridesmaids and debutantes.

“So general is the pink craze,” the paper wrote, “that some women are rebelling against it.”

Pink is for…boys?

Around the same time, pink gained relevance in another realm: baby fashion.

Gender and baby fashion had intersected for years; around World War I, etiquette guides and fashion advice columns began advising that mothers dress their children in clothing with gender-specific hues.

But which colors? A 1927 retailer survey on infant clothing colors published in TIME shows a split nation, with retailers like Filene’s and Marshall Field’s recommending pink for boys, but Macy’s, Bullock’s, and others claiming pink was best for girls.

By the 1960s, however, mothers began buying pink clothing for their female babies, dressing their male children in pastel blues.

“None of this transition happened by childcare expert fiat or industry proclamation,” writes historian Jo B. Paoletti.

Instead, pink gained steam as a signifier of a baby’s female sex as part of a post-World War II push to reinforce traditional gender roles in American homes — and the realization by retailers that they could make more money that way.

“The more baby clothing could be designed for an individual child — and sex was the easiest and most obvious way to distinguish babies — the harder it would be for parents to hand down clothing from one child to the next, and the more clothing they would have to buy as their family grew,” Paoletti writes.

Soon, retailers featured entire “pink aisles” packed with pink-colored clothing and toys for tiny consumers.

The dark side of pink

Pink was also rejected by some as a symbol of weakness or even sinister intent.

In Nazi Germany, for example, the color was used to brand gay men in concentration and death camps.

As the Cold War emerged, suspected Communist sympathizers were given the derogatory name of “pinkos” — a term that referred to a person with “red” tendencies toward radical politics.

Meanwhile, members of the women’s liberation movement attempted to distance themselves from a color that had become inextricably linked with femininity and sexuality — think: Marilyn Monroe slinking down a staircase in a shocking pink gown, surrounded by tuxedoed men.

Anti-feminists, meanwhile, embraced pink.

Author Helen B. Andelin, for example, made public appearances in all-pink ensembles in the 1960s and 1970s during lectures encouraging women to abandon feminism and embrace lives as housewives.

Reclaiming pink

Pink remains associated with femininity to this day — but in recent decades, groups once disdainfully branded with the color have made moves to reclaim it.

In the LGBTQ community, for example, people who were once forced to wear pink as outcasts have adopted the hue as a symbol of their movement for social justice.

In 1987, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) adopted a bubble-gum pink triangle in its “Silence = Death” campaign to increase awareness of HIV-AIDS and destigmatize the disease.

It was just one example of pink being used to represent gay pride.

Some feminists have also reclaimed the color, fighting gender stereotypes with a tongue-in-cheek adoption of all shades of rose, fuchsia, and bubble-gum pink.

At the 2017 Women’s March, for example, a sea of protesters wearing pink, cat-eared “pussy hats” protested the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, whose lewd remarks about female genitalia during a leaked interview drew worldwide condemnation.

Today, pink is what you make of it — and it has grown in popularity once more.

In 2016, Pantone announced that a shade of dusty pink — dubbed Millennial Pink for the generation that had embraced it—was its Color of the Year.

This year, Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Barbie movie helped fuel the rise of the pink-drenched “Barbiecore” aesthetic, inspiring admirers to saturate their homes and wardrobes with every shade of pink.

According to Axios, searches for the term “Barbiecore aesthetic room” rose over 1,000 percent between May 2022 and May 2023, reflecting consumers’ craving for as-pink-as-possible interiors.

There’s no telling which permutation of pink will captivate us next — but given the colorful history of the hues that fall somewhere between white and red, pink’s next heyday is probably right around the corner.

Barbie would approve of the pink petals on this beach morning glory.

Pink flowers like this one get their rosy tinge from a group of biological pigments called anthocyanins, which attract pollinators — and human admirers — to colors ranging from the palest carnation to the most ostentatious tropical fuchsia.

[brenninthetaylorverse]

"i'm so depressed but I act like it's my birthday!" under the best pop beat i've ever heard

[benasabrina]

Nick November/Nickvember day 22

Reblogs are appreciated~

College era Phoenix with his iPod nano! I know the iPod touches were a thing during his college years but he didn’t have the funds for one! Plus his nano is still perfectly usable!

[tapakah0]

Well pt. 6 | pt. 8 Mikey's hair

[fairytaleprincessart]

𝖒𝖊𝖔𝖜 ✨

[anunfortunatekinlist]

marauders fans: we separated the art from the artist, this fandom is completely separate from the source material;

also them, will degrade any writer who doesn't write a coffee shop au, or university au, or jegulus in the only acceptable grumpyboyxsunshineboy trope, bullying artists for drawing sirius with body hair, bullying writers for not writing your exact headcanons, not allowing for people to grow their own opinions (aka. making ATYD the "intro-fic"), and not supporting artists and writers who are not the fandoms "it-person" for the week.

Bro at this point give it back to that ugly terf.

[juniemunie]

"Why am I still doing this?"

"Don't you get it?"

"This is all just a show... and we're playing parts~"

[viviandarkbloombartylusversion]

Can I get an order of bully james potter with a side of bully/bystander marauders?? Like I don't give a fuck if you make james beat the absolute shit out of snape while sirius throws in a kick or two and remus and peter watch. Let james and sirius just be assholes, idk I think I'd be interesting to explore but maybe that's just me

[napoleonforeheadkisser]

Napoleon and Josephine for you all...

I did these in December I'm pretty sure, I just forgot I had a tumblr account.

[stealingpotatoes]

so battle scars is definetly not canon to tl4j right

unless they're poly ofc

i thought battle scars is set years before JS lmao?? you know that you can like. have more than one relationship in your life right having an ex doesn’t make you polyamorous or a cheater

[thepoisonroom]

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness

[thethief1996]

gerry duggan stumbled completely by accident into this very cool idea that mutants were stripped of their personal cultural differences in favor of an artificial krakoan identity that would've gone really well with the whole narrative of krakoa as an inherently flawed ethnostate. the thing is gerry duggan really thought his made up culture was the coolest thing in the world and was earnestly writing about viking burial rites so it didn't even cross his mind to explore that

[the-moon-says-hi]

no but imagine a marauders harry potter!au

as in james potter was prophesized to defeat lord voldemort (no one knows who he is, cause like, he hasn’t shown up (yet)) and like the plot of the harry potter series happens with the marauders & co (with twists)

like

idk i think it would be cool

[theblackstar04]

oooh okay what about black sisters hcs (or just ramble idc honestly) ?

the black sisters actually make me so insane omg these are just some head cannons i have for them

bellatrix

-she's the eldest of her sisters

-plays croquet and fencing, along with self defense

-joined quidditch in her 3rd year as either a beater or seeker (i haven't decided which)

-genuinely believes in pureblood ideology, especially after hogwarts

-dated rita secretly during hogwarts until she married rodulphus a few years after hogwarts

-her and rita had a on/off relationship, longest they were broken up was a month

-bpd with psychotic features, ptsd, destructive behaviours (especially when she was younger)

-her 'rebellion' is putting 100% into everything. they want her to be a deatheater? she's going to be the most devoted one there is. do well in school? she's getting top scores.

-very extreme with everything she does.

-hated sirius since he was born for getting to be the heir. was both happy and angry when he ran.

-regulus was her favourite until he became the heir

-jealous that narcissa and andromeda were closer with eachother than with her

-used to sing

-she wasn't always 'crazy', but once everyone referred to her that way and acted as if she was, well, its difficult to not become that

-if she was an animagus, she would be a raven

-naturally curly hair, absolutely cannot tame it. black hair

Andromeda

-middle child

-played croquet, didn't care much for any sports

-it was only in hogwarts that she questioned pureblood ideology

-dated ted after 6th year secretly

-ran away after hogwarts with ted

-challenged her families beliefs subtly

-ptsd, osdd 3, extreme paranoia

-was closest with narcissa (and later sirius)

-played the violin

-visited narcissa the night before her wedding, wanting her to run with her. accepted her answer as no, but made sure she knows how to contact her if she ever needs to.

-she does miss her sisters, but knows running was the right thing for her to do

-if she was an animagus, she would be a heron

-naturally wavy/curly hair, very dark brown hair.

Narcissa

-youngest child

-plays croquet, prefers to watch quidditch rather than play.

-doesn't 100% agree with pureblood ideology after andromeda ran, but will never openly go against it

-often got overlooked in favour of her sisters

-she doesn't express emotions loudly like her sisters, but she feels very strongly and deeply

-had a short and sweet relationship with alice before lucius. she wonders what it could've been

-dated lucius in 7th year, got married a year after hogwarts

-ptsd, osdd 4, anorexia (mostly recovered in adulthood, relapsed with the stress of the war)

-was closest with andromeda (and then regulus)

-plays the piano occasionally

-if she was an animagus, she would be a swan

-naturally wavy hair, straightens it. black hair with poliosis making streaks of her hair white. she later starts dying her hair

All of them

-i hc that croquet, fencing, and hunting were all things that purebloods were expected to do

-they were all close during their hogwarts years, before everything went downhill

-the symbolism of three!!

-childhood nicknames for eachother make me cry. "andy" "cissy" "bella"/"trix/ie"

[nelkcats]

Melted Boy

The day Danny discovered immortality he felt happy, but as the years passed his happiness faded and he realized that it was more of a curse than a blessing, he couldn't stand it. The deaths of everyone he knew weighed heavily on his shoulders. Every day he felt more alone.

When the last member of his family dies, his core can't take it anymore and an ice dome forms around the halfa, putting him into hibernation and freezing everything around him. Amity disappears on a frozen land.

Hundreds of years later, Danny opens his eyes to find that the world has changed and is full of heroes. Phantom, the first hero, rises from his rest with the eyes of the Justice League following but refuses to be part of their team. It's time to explore the world and leave his hero life behind, as his family would have wanted.

Of course, many people are not satisfied with his decision.

[youngpsichichugemuscle]