My Pussy Hat

Why I’m Still Wearing My Pussy Hat

By Maud Kersnowski Sachs

Two weeks ago, I was standing on East 42nd Street with some friends, my husband, my nine-year-old daughter, her best friend, and 400,000 other people, many of us wearing pink knit hats. Even the police officers had pink hats stretched over the uniforms’ hats. In D.C. there were over 500,000. In Chicago, it was 250,000. In L.A. there were at least 500,000 more marchers. And this wasn’t just happening in large Democrat strongholds. Over 550 Sister Marches took place across the country, plus 100 international marches. Cheyenne, Wyoming had 1,500 marchers. In Topeka, Kansas the count was 4,000. The most conservative estimates are that in the U.S. over 3.3 million people participated in the Women’s March of January 21, 2017, making it the largest protest in American history.

The crowd photos show a wash of pink, created by thousands of Pink Pussy Hats. Like the March itself, the hats began as a good idea that spread across social media and within groups of women. They were brainchild of screenwriter Krista Suh and architect Jayna Zweiman with the help Kat Coyle, the owner of an L.A. knitting shop. Needlework shops across the country quickly became mini-hubs of activism, collecting hats to send to D.C. and planning appearances at Sister Marches.

If you’ve never been in knitting shop, the idea of activism spreading through these small, primarily female businesses devoted to craftiness may be surprising. But these stores nurture their own communities, as well as, a network of owners and suppliers. These are local places where people, particularly women, gather and share information, and often about more than needlework. Walk into almost any knitting shop and you’ll find people sitting around a table, needles clicking, talking. If you want to know about regional politics, local schools, or upcoming elections, skip the corner bar and drop in at a knitting circle.

During January, there were always at least five people sitting at the big round wooden table in our local knitting shop, each wearing a pink hat and knitting another one. Every finished hat dropped into the collection bin for D.C. felt like vote cast against the coming wave Trumpism.

I’ll admit it; pink is not my favorite color. First of all, I just don’t look that good in pink. Add to that, the fact that pink is the color of gender marking for little girls. Walk into any toy store and you can identify the girl aisles and the boy aisles by the colors on the shelves. When I was pregnant I chaffed against the amount of pink that arrived, despite my prohibition on the color. And then there’s the breast cancer thing. During October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, everything is pink – from football players’ shoes to coffee cups. Breast cancer pinking is an industry of its own, to the point that Susan Komen Foundation tried, unsuccessfully, to patent the pink ribbon. The commodification of breast cancer through a color has spawned questions about proper use of funds and a general backlash in some communities. While many women find this sea of pink empowering, October pink makes others, including many cancer survivors, squeamish.

So there is something wonderfully subversive about protesting in a pink hat. (And yes, I did find a flattering yarn. Pink, like life, comes in all shades.) No multi-national, conglomerate sponsored the hats. The businesses that benefited were primarily small, local shops, owned and operated by women. And in all those hats, there’s an echo of reclaiming the word “slut” after Rush Limbaugh called Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke one for using birth control. To this day, among my friends the word “slut” is a punch-line that means a well-educated woman. In this case, the color of powder rooms and Barbie dolls has become the symbol of resistance.

But why keep wearing the pink hat? Does it make any difference?

The first two incomprehensible weeks of the Trump administration have felt more like a year. Each hour there’s a new assault on core American values from the White House. They’ve hit civil rights, a free press, immigration, freedom of speech – the list goes on and on. We’re all pretty battered. It’s easy to forget that millions of us marched in opposition to these policies two weeks ago and that just a week ago thousands of protesters poured into airports across the country within hours of the Muslim Ban. And at airport protests there were the hats, not as many as the week before, but they were there.

Each time I see a Pussy Hat, I know that the wearer is a fellow protestor. People pass me on the street and smile. Teenage girls say “nice hat”. A mother and daughter, from Virginia who had marched in D.C., asked me for knitting tips. People in coffee shops strike up conversations about the March. Friends are still asking me to knit hats for them. At my daughter’s school, Pussy-Hat-wearing moms whom I’ve never spoken to seek me out. The hats reminds us that we are not alone. In fact, we are great in number. We are millions strong. We stood up and protested what we knew was coming. We will continue to protest. We will take part in the National Strike on February 17. We will call our politicians. We will show up at town hall meetings when those politicians come back to their districts. We will take over social media for our patriotic cause. We will shop at businesses that stand with us. We will donate to the ACLU. We will march for science on Earth Day, March 22. And we will do much, much more. Most importantly, come November 2018 and November 2020, we will vote. And I for one will be wearing my Pussy Hat.

Pink is the color of the resistance. Stay Loud!

 

If you’re interested in making your own hat or finding out more about the Pussy Hat Project visit their website: PussyHatProject.com The only modification I made to their knit hat pattern was that I added some loose stitches across the base of the “ears” to make them a little perkier.

 

 

 

 

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Maud Kersnowski Sachs

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