Democrats Appear in Pink to Protest

But is this really a “Barbie” moment?

Forget white suffragist pantsuits, the political uniform of the female Trump opposition during the president’s first term. On Tuesday night during President Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, about three dozen members of the Democratic Women’s Caucus wore bright hues of pink.

Amid the sea of dark suits in the House chamber, all that pink was impossible to miss. It was also impossible not to wonder if the members of Congress were falling back on an old performance strategy rather than grappling with their bigger problems.

There were congresswomen in hot pink. In shell pink. In baby pink. In pink jackets and pink skirts. There were even some congressmen in pink ties. Nancy Pelosi wore a bright pink pantsuit; Representative Jill Tokuda of Hawaii, a bubble-gum pink blazer with “We the people” scrawled in black on her lapels; Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez of New Mexico, chair of the caucus, a raspberry jacket and cotton candy colored palazzo pants.

“We decided to use a strong color because what’s happening now is more extreme than ever,” said Ms. Fernandez, referring to Mr. Trump’s policies and executive orders on women’s health care and Ukraine, among other things. Pink is, she said, “the color of women’s power, of persistence and of resistance.”

As a color, pink has been associated in modern times with stereotyping and marginalizing women and gay people. In the 1970s, the term “pink collar jobs” referred to jobs overwhelmingly assumed by women: secretary, nurse, cleaning lady. Later the term “pink ghetto” was coined to refer to low-paid female labor.