We celebrate Mother’s Day on the second Sunday of May to honor the women who have significantly impacted our lives. Pink is the traditional color of this special occasion, symbolizing love, appreciation, and gratitude.
Pink is composed of a combination of red, blue, and white, from which it gets some of its characteristics. Red represents passion and energy, while blue and white signify peace and tranquillity.
Where red is usually associated with emotional intensity and lust, pink has a softer, more loving side. This inviting hue embodies motherhood’s loving and compassionate nature, and is meant to evoke feelings of tenderness, sweetness, and warmth.
The Shifting Symbolism of Pink
Did you know that the world’s oldest colors are bright pink pigments dating back over 1.1 billion years? Scientists from Australia, Japan, and the US extracted the ancient pink pigments from rocks deep beneath the Sahara desert in Africa.
Pink is even mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey, written in 800 BC. Later, a Greek botanist used the term to describe carnations’ vibrant, ruffled edges. By the 1700s, pink had become a fashionable color for European elites and had made its way into the fashion industry.
“Pink isn’t just a color, it’s an attitude.” – Miley Cyrus
Pink is often associated with femininity, compassion, love, romance, and feelings of warmth and comfort. After World War II, it was seen as a symbol of femininity; however, the gender-coding of color has largely been a Western convention. In Japan, India, and Africa, the color has been used in men’s fashion for centuries.
Throughout history, pink has been featured in architecture, politics, and fashion. At the beginning of the 2000s, there was a boom of “millennial pink,” a tone defined as a blush or delicate pink, seen everywhere, from restaurant interiors to product packaging and fashion.
Reactions to the color pink have tended to be divided and contradictory. It’s too soft, shocking, feminine, and queer. It’s traditional, associated with stuffy gender roles, transgressive, camp, and in bad taste. Pink is childish, tacky, luxurious, and erotic all at the same time. But the reality is that pink can be all these things.
“Pink is the color of strength, a color of conviction, a color of decision-making.” – Angad Bedi
In recent years, pink has moved away from being seen culturally as a derision-worthy display of vapid girliness to symbolize a more feminist reclamation of gender and modern genderlessness.
Elsewhere, pink has become internationally synonymous with the fight against breast cancer through the pink ribbon. In the US, female protesters wear pink to signify ownership of their sexual, reproductive, and social rights.
We often associate bright and cheerful colors with happiness when we think of our mothers. Whether it’s sunny yellow, calming blue, or life-giving green, the colors surrounding motherhood are generally filled with positivity and love. Of all the colors associated with Mother’s Day, pink is the most special.
Some believe pink flowers bloomed in the location where the Virgin Mary fell, making it a symbol of a mother’s undying love. Other theorists suggest that color embodies confidence, royalty, inspiration, and imagination.
The earliest known reference to the association of pink with motherhood dates back to the 1700s, when the French author and playwright Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni wrote about how the color was used to represent a mother’s tenderness and care.
PINK HAS SINCE COME TO REPRESENT MOTHERHOODS NURTURING, SUPPORTIVE, AND LOVING CARE.
Pink is a symbol of motherhood, and its associations with nurturing and love continue to be celebrated by mothers and daughters worldwide.
So, let us honor and celebrate our mothers this Mother’s Day with the beautiful and meaningful color of pink. Show your appreciation and gratitude by gifting her something pink, a bouquet, a piece of jewelry, or a simple card. Your love and thoughtfulness will brighten her day and joyfully fill her heart.
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