Sea of Pink

Gosh it can be hard to take a decent photo of oneself. This is a pic of me in a pink dress I wore today, to be honest it was a little awkward. The weather report threatened snow and trying to get the tights to stay up, along with the knee socks, etc etc was trickier than just slipping into some jeans...Aaaanyways, today many of my colleagues and I wore pink as a stand against Bullying. Made me think once again about the symbolism of clothing as visual culture...Probably because I should be writing my artography paper right now instead of blogging, but oh well.

The reason behind all this pink is that back in September 2007 in Cambridge Ontario a boy wore a pink polo shirt to school on the first day and was harassed with homophobic taunting. A couple of grade 12 boys at the school decided to fight back against this kind of bullying. They went to a discount store and bought a bunch of cheap pink t-shirts and emailed their friends to tell them to wear pink as well. The next day it was a "sea of pink" at the school. I am excited about this little bit of home grown activism as well as the anti-homophobia/bullying message that these boys chose to send. A few weeks ago Steve Mulligan the Anti-homophobia and Diversity Consultant for the Social Responsibility and Diversity Team of the Vancouver School Board came to speak to us and he has sent me a couple of lesson plan ideas for pink day. Email me if you would like them. Here is a link to an article by the CBC about the boys in Cambridge.