Purple Feminism

 

For Sylvie.

ForLuke.

 

For me.

From Jennifer Baumgardner's foreword to Fashion - Philosophy for Everyone: Thinking with Style:

I, a feminist writer of 40 and mother of two, do not want to dress "like a feminist" (or a mother, for that matter. Mom jeans. Blecch.) In short, I don't want to be reduced to the clichés or stereotypes of the identity that has liberated me. One of my closest colleagues calls it the fear of "becoming a purple feminist" -- purple sneakers, purple over-sized "This is what a feminist looks like" t-shirts, "ethnic" (though not your own ethnicity) tops, big jewelry, and "natural" hair. Perhaps a hemp pantsuit in Grimace grape for a special meeting.

All this made me laugh, but rather uncomfortably, as purple has always been a favourite colour of mine and I tend toward wearing comfy sweats in the shade. What's more, I'm not even as fancy as that. Big jewelry -- or any jewelry at all -- is just too much work for me right now, as Sylvie is still wont to try to pull it off and my hair is less "natural"-- I get it coloured regularly -- than it is, um, "unbrushed."

Both my kids love purple, too, and although I was unaware of its feminist history (herstory?) -- Baumgardner goes on to say in the notes that purple was a "traditional color of the suffrage movement in England and later in the US"  -- I've always thought of it as the perfect feminist colour, half pink and half blue. Why don't they make more baby clothes in purple instead of in those insipid shades of green and yellow that bring to mind the earliest excretions babies make at both ends?

For the baby we're not having.