Gilbert Baker (June 2, 1951 - March 31, 2017) was a gay American artist, designer and activist, best known as the primary creator of the rainbow flag. In 1972 Baker was living in Chicago as an openly gay man, he was taught to sew by a fellow activist, Mary Dunn, using these skills to create banners for gay-rights and anti-war protest marches. It was also during this time that he met and became friends with Harvey Milk, an influential gay leader, who challenged Baker to create a new symbol of pride for the gay community.
The first rainbow flags were produced by a team that included Baker, seamster James McNamara and artist Lynn Segerblom. Segerblom, who was then known as Faerie Argyle Rainbow, reports to have created the original dyeing process for the flags. Thirty volunteers hand-dyed and stitched the first two flags for the parade. These original flags flew at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade celebration on June 25, 1978.
Though many variations have emerged in the decades since, the original design had eight stripes, with a specific meaning assigned to each of the colours: Hot pink for “sex”, red for “life”, orange for “healing”, yellow for “sunlight”, green for “nature”, turquoise for “magic” (though sometimes given as “art”?), indigo for “serenity” and violet for “spirit”.
I’m a little late for pride month, but I got all this done a lot quicker than I expected considering I only started working on it at the beginning of June (though I’ve been planning it on and off for a few years now😅). I did a lot of research and planning for each piece, and there was a lot I wanted to communicate with the project as a whole - it’s been a lot of work, and I challenged myself with a bunch of stuff I’m not familiar with, but I’m really happy with how everything turned out.
Happy pride, everyone, here’s to our community, to all the work that got us here, and to all the progress still to come! 🏳️🌈✨🏳️⚧️
“Maybe the reason trans women’s posts are getting marked as 18+ even after getting reviewed is because the review process is getting outsourced to other countries where they’re poorly trained and have different standards” yeah sure. I suppose you think Disney doesn’t make movies with gay people to appease markets in China too. Get fucking real.
Why is it so hard for people to acknowledge the possibility that staff might just have a bigotry problem
as soon as the internet decided depression and anxiety were the everyman mental illnesses and therefore not to be taken seriously we were all fucked tbh bc the fact that i have to feel embarrassed to admit i have debilitating anxiety because people will think im just an uwu dont call me out coward is ridiculous. its insane that i have to clarify that my depressive episodes are like life threatening and not whatever dipshit dumbed down idea of depression people seem to have like oh yeah i just wanna watch netflix and eat ice cream and not text people back. like bro i think im the devil
like maybe depression and anxiety are household names now but they do still kill people. like. theres a reason they fucking kill people.
Hey, psa: there is a Dove ad at some movie theatres that begins with a warning “sensitive content” and the Dove logo and the song is “you are so beautiful to me.” The nature of the “sensitive content” is eating disorders. If this triggers you, please immediately bury yourself in your phone or close your eyes until the song ends because it otherwise may be upsetting.
If you could let your friends know, that might help them!
Add onto this the constant feeling of being overwhelmed. You didn’t get the laundry done yesterday and now there are piles of it. You forgot to take out the chicken so now you’re trying to throw something together for dinner at 9 pm. You forgot to order your prescription and now it’s the weekend so you’re going to go without for 2 days. There are dishes in the sink. You forgot to plug in the vacuum so now you can’t even clean the floor. There are hobbies you can’t do because you’ve convinced yourself you aren’t allowed to experience fun until the work is finished. Slowly, it all builds and you are left sitting there with so much to do and the inability to organize tasks leaves you paralyzed and lost amid everything! Honestly, you fucking break down crying because you feel like an incomplete person incapable of caring for themselves.