Hey gay people, can we please have the rainbow back?
Don’t get me wrong, I love all people, but really, who gave the gays the right to take away something as simple and pure as the rainbow? Children love rainbows (especially girls), children need rainbows. I need rainbows.
Remember the simpler days, when a rainbow was the thing that magically appeared at the end of a beautiful, warm summer rain; the Sun is shining and a spectrum of light appears in the sky AND it has a pot of gold at the end of it. WOW. Every kid wants to chase the rainbow – right?
Remember the days of Rainbow Brite. How cool was she? Rainbow Brite was an animated television series introduced by Hallmark Cards in 1984. The story goes: there was a little orphan girl named Wisp, who is taken by an unknown force to the Colorless World (oh horrors). She must find the Sphere of Light, but upon doing so, she befriends a sprite, Twink, and a majestic white horse known as Starlite. She rescues the seven Color Kids (one for each color of the rainbow) and finds the Color Belt, which is the tool she needs to bring color to the land.
After using the Color Belt to defeat the King of Shadows (also known as the Evil Force and the Dark One), an evil hooded being with twitchy fingers, the unknown force renames Wisp as Rainbow Brite. She and the Color Kids (and their helpers, the Sprites) live in Rainbow Land and are in charge of all the colors on Earth. (from Wiki)
Now, say for example: a child your child knows is having a birthday party. The little girl loooves rainbows, as a matter of fact, they have a rainbow flag flying at their house. The child sends out Rainbow Brite invitations that her Mom made especially for her. The little girl and her Mom deliver the invites and they are wearing the cutest, little, matching Rainbow Brite t-shirs (that also match the invitations):
… would you let your kid go to the party? The invitation said they were going to have a real pony! Not that simple is it? Why are you hesitating on picking up the phone and RSVPing? Oh, that’s right, you have to think about the rainbow thing. Because now the rainbow means something else; now the rainbow implies a particular sexual orientation? NOW you are left to wonder at what age you need to have “the talk” about the damn rainbow.
After using the Color Belt to defeat the King of Shadows (also known as the Evil Force and the Dark One), an evil hooded being with twitchy fingers, the unknown force renames Wisp as Rainbow Brite. She and the Color Kids (and their helpers, the Sprites) live in Rainbow Land and are in charge of all the colors on Earth. (from Wiki)Now, say for example: a child your child knows is having a birthday party. The little girl loooves rainbows, as a matter of fact, they have a rainbow flag flying at their house. The child sends out Rainbow Brite invitations that her Mom made especially for her. The little girl and her Mom deliver the invites and they are wearing the cutest, little, matching Rainbow Brite t-shirs (that also match the invitations):
… would you let your kid go to the party? The invitation said they were going to have a real pony! Not that simple is it? Why are you hesitating on picking up the phone and RSVPing? Oh, that’s right, you have to think about the rainbow thing. Because now the rainbow means something else; now the rainbow implies a particular sexual orientation? NOW you are left to wonder at what age you need to have “the talk” about the damn rainbow.
6 comments:
The sprite's name was "Twink" huh? I wonder if this show is where the idea for gays to take up the rainbow as their symbol came from?
And what about Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition?
I used to LOVE Rainbow Brite. I remember seeing the movie in the theater as a kid. I tried to get my daughter into it, but by then it wasn't happening.
Oh yeah, the Rainbow Coalition... people of all colors fighing social injustice, civil rights and so on and so forth
I really am curious where the rainbow symbol originated. I recently saw a photo of a "club kid" dressed as Rainbow Brite.
Now I know:
The rainbow flag has become one of the most widely used and recognized symbols of the gay pride movement. The concept of the rainbow is hardly a new one. Rainbows have used since ancient times in all kinds of cultures- Greek, African, Native American and Celtic, to name only a few. Even Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition has made use of the rainbow has a freedom symbol.
The Rainbow Flag as we know it today was developed by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker in 1978. At the time, there was a need for a gay symbol which could be used year after year for the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade. Baker took inspiration from many sources, from the hippies movement to the black civil rights movement, and came up with a flag with eight stripes. Color has always played an important power in the gay right movement- Victorian England symbolized homosexuality with the color green, lavender became popular in the 1960s, and and pink from the pink triangle has caught on as well- and the colors of the gay flag were no different. Baker explained that his colors each stood for a different aspect of gay and lesbian life:
Hot pink for sexuality,
Red for life,
Orange for healing,
Yellow for the sun,
Green for nature,
Blue for art,
Indigo for harmony,
Violet for spirit.
Baker himself and thirty other volunteers hand-stitched and hand-dyed to large prototype flags for the 1978 parade. It was an immediate hit. However, when Baker took his design to the San Francisco Flag Co. to have it mass-produced for the 1979 parade, he had to remove the hot pink stripe. Baker had hand-dyed the color, and unfortunately pink was not a commercially available color.
Later that year, when the city's first openly gay supervisor, Harvey Milk, was assassinated, the 1979 Pride Parade Committee found in Baker's flag the perfect symbol for the entire gay community to unite under in protest of this tragedy. The committee got rid of the indigo stripe to make the colors evenly divisible along the parade route: red, orange, and yellow on one side of the street; green, blue, and purple on the other. (This version also conforms to traditional color theory- the three primary colors and three secondary colors in art- rather than the spectrum of light colors of R O Y G B I V. Thus, today's six-color flag was born and displayed during the 1979 Pride Parade.
I think the rainbow can have two meanings and, for little ones, it's just a pretty phenomenon in the sky, no need to have "the talk."
Oh, and my sister actually had a rainbow brite costume that my mother made her for halloween. She even made the darn rainbow boots!
Those Rainbow Brite costumes are really cute (especially the cushy boots).
My child could definitely go to that party, I like the theme. Not to mention they have a pony!
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