A World Where Everything’s Pink
“Happy Pink Wednesday Lovelies!” is how you are welcomed into Instagram’s Disneyland of pink.
In this world, it’s pretty things only. Boxes of pink roses, Juicy Couture perfumes, macaron candles, coffee mugs with whimsical sayings in gold cursive, Victoria’s Secret wallpaper, quilted Chanel bags, pens wearing bows, sparkling makeup trays, Starbucks tumblers with Louis Vuitton logos. Every item is a shade of pink somewhere between a pointe shoe and a spoonful of Pepto Bismol.
Hundreds of women are part of Instagram’s pink community, a social media collective obsessed with mostly soft shades of pink. The community’s size is hard to measure, but each time I search for more pink accounts, there are always new names. Hashtags like #pinkobsessed and #pinkfeed have thousands of posts, and most of them feature a similar tableau of the items mentioned above, plus pink pumpkins now for fall. The aesthetic exists at the intersection of Girls Next Door, a trip to Home Goods, and a fairy tale.
Lindsay of @lindzluvvpink has loved pink for as long as she can remember.
“All those movies, Legally Blonde, Clueless, Girls Next Door, a lot of them were pink-based with designer brands, luxury stuff, the glamour, the hair and makeup,” she says. “It’s just that whole image I guess. The girl walking down the street with her designer outfit, her pink accessories, drinking her lil’ Starbucks, just the aesthetic of it.”
Like a lot of people in the community, Lindsay has a room in her home dedicated to pink — a “beauty room” as it’s called in the beauty YouTube world. Her husband surprised her with the remodeled guest room for Christmas last year. The origins of this collective of pink lovers are hard to pinpoint, but it seems like an offshoot of beauty YouTube with its glittering brushes and palettes. One of the original tastemakers is vlogger Stephanie Lewis, who goes by SL MissGlam. Early videos from her page showcase the girly-glam style seen in these #pinkcommunity posts. It was SL MissGlam who inspired Lindsay to create a pink room. “Once I saw her room, I knew I’ve gotta have one like that,” she says.
Pink Land is, make no mistake, a supremely soothing world to get lost in. Sitting down to write this story, I became distracted about 50,000 times when I would pull up Instagram to describe these posts. Thirty minutes later, it would be just me and 10 tabs open with Juicy Couture hand wipes, champagne-scented candles, and a cupcake sparkling in a snow globe. This summer was chaotic, a dizzying vibes-off one for the books. Staring at these posts were some of the only purely peaceful, head-emptying moments I had.
“I had a woman who was a psychiatrist who said that she finds people are much more comfortable and eager to talk if they’re in a pink room,” color consultant Amy Wax tells me. “If you look at pink, it’s a combination of red and white, right? Red is passion, white is purity, and what’s in between there? Affection. How could you not love affection?”
Shannon started her account @pearlsandpinkwishes last December after using pink images on Pinterest as a self-soothing mechanism, a “cope” as she refers to it. She was drawn to influencer Brooklyn whose page is the community’s signature ultra-calming melange of tufted ballet-pink couches, Louis Vuitton phone cases, and at-home coffee bars.
In 1978, a research scientist named Alexander Schauss invented a shade of pink that, when stared at on an 18-by-24 inch card, had a “marked effect on lowering the heart rate, pulse and respiration as compared to other colors.” Shannon knows this to be true. A special education teacher, she’s noticed the effects of colors on her students and on herself.
“After experiencing trauma and having anxiety build-up and PTSD, I definitely skyrocketed towards pink images,” she says. “Suddenly, it became ‘I’m calm when I’m shopping,’ that’s my de-stresser. Looking at pictures makes me really happy, so it’s got to be some type of serotonin.”
Life in 2021 is a constant need to be soothed in a modern way by a modern world that stresses us out. We can watch as many episodes of ‘90s sitcoms as needed until our agitated eyes shut, have “Pumpkin Festival Fall Ambiance” playing in the background as we try to type one email, follow accounts that gently encourage us to text a friend and drink water. The pink community is so emblematic of this contemporary desperation for calm. It’s a singular, consuming escape tailored to a hyper-specific interest. At any time of day, you can feel like you’re walking into a lightly occupied cupcake shop or salon where it’s 3 p.m. and you’ve just finished shopping with your friends.
Part of the appeal, though, is that it isn’t just an online world. Spending money is certainly part of the aesthetic, but this is also a pink fantasy built with resourcefulness. Ross, Home Goods, TJ Maxx, and Marshall’s are the big-box names given when I ask what the most popular stores are for finding pink things. Decorations are often handmade, whether it’s a Dollar General dollhouse spray-painted pink or a DIY snow globe.
Items with designer logos are often crafted by small businesses or individuals and sold at modest prices. I love these pieces because they reimagine a logo to be someone’s precise idea of how they want luxury to look. Maybe it’s that Chanel double-C on a custom $25 rose box or a rhinestoned Louis Vuitton coffee mug. An accessible, luxurious lifestyle by the dolls, for the dolls.
“People will have Chanel-inspired things or Tiffany & Co. or YSL, Dior,” Shannon says. “They’ll make stuff like that off-brand or imitate it. Coasters are big, mugs based off Dior, little organizational acrylic cases that have the Chanel logo on top.”
Shannon connects me with Lindsey Lee who runs an online boutique called With Love Shop. The pink community has generated a cottage industry of small businesses who sell things like planners, acrylic makeup trays, and shopping bags filled with roses. Lee originally had a store in a Washington D.C. mall where she curated a collection of “girly things that I liked which I could never really find,” she says. When the mall went under, she moved her shop to Instagram and Shopify. The discovery of this dedicated customer base of pink lovers came after she began using hashtags like #pinkfeed.
“Once I started realizing there’s this whole world of women who really share this love for the color pink, it inspired me to grow my collection even more and cater to this community,” she says. “It’s funny, pink is a popular color and it’s not that present in retail. When you go to a store, you might see a pink bag or a pink wallet, but you’re never going to see a whole collection of pink. For some women, their whole houses are pink. Their love for the color is not just, ‘Oh, I have one item in my house,’ it’s part of their identity.”
She has seen the group grow a lot in the three years she’s been part of it. More hashtags, more home square footage dedicated to pink, more small businesses selling pink items. Before, her product line was a lot broader, she says. The more she became part of the community, the more her shop became tailored to fill this Instagram subculture. It’s completely changed the way she does business.
“I can literally ask girls, ‘Hey what do you guys think of this?’” she says. The feedback dictates her product line right down to the shade. She once ordered hot-pink key chains that had to be given away because they didn’t sell. In Pink World, a soft, airy hue dominates.
“That bubble-gum kind of pink, that’s it,” Lee says. “If you go beyond that, no. The photos don’t even do well.”
Hot pink, you’ll notice, is not usually seen on Pink Instagram. “I can’t stand hot pink,” Shannon tells me. Lindsay is more flexible, saying that she’ll “take any pink,” but that her favorite is definitely that “light baby pink.” Hot pink, she says, reminds her of ‘90s Barbie stuff. This light pink feels exclusively built to be photographed over and over, soothing the eye each time.
Nostalgia isn’t really part of the vibe. There’s a traditional femininity to the aesthetic, but it’s not focused on any particular era of decor. Movies like Clueless or shows like Girls Next Door are mentioned as introductions to a pink, glamorous lifestyle, but ‘90s and Y2K references aren’t really seen in these images. It is generally a grown-up, modern version of girlishness. That being said, Lindsay thinks that some of the style comes from that early-2000s era of paparazzi shots with celebrities holding Starbucks cups.
Coffee is a big part of the ambiance. Nearly everyone has this light-pink Keurig machine and mugs proliferate. The coffee bar is also a trope of the beauty room. I found one business dedicated to selling Keurig cup holders in pumpkin and butterfly designs, and Starbucks tumblers are a subculture unto themselves. The presence of the coffee bar, while it does feel related to that celebrity-holding-coffee idea, also furthers the calming Parisian girl-dream energy. Relaxation is the connecting thread with all of the candles, body washes, and flowers.
“I think [light pink] is popular right now because it’s halfway between purity and passion,” Wax speculates. “It’s that sweet spot of innocence. I think it’s a color that we feel relates to us physically.”
That innocence makes Pink World feel surreal at times, a world of rose-pinks and no darkness. This isn’t necessarily a through-line connection, but religion is frequently mentioned in the bios of the pink ladies. “Jesus at the center of it all,” one bio reads. “God ✞ Fashion” says another. Bible verses are quoted frequently, and one account I saw linked out to the Jehovah’s Witness homepage. It’s kind of funny to see biblical references alongside a bedazzled Victoria’s Secret mug, but it also makes sense considering delicate pinks are the ultimate in traditional femininity.
Innocent, happy, supportive. Those are the resounding words the women I talked to use to describe the pink community. “Especially this past year when everyone was so isolated, I think that it was something nice to have,” With Love Shop’s Lindsey tells me. “I didn’t realize that the women I have met — who follow me and I follow them — it goes well beyond the color. Mainly it’s just a support system for people who are very positive.”
For me, this dedication to pink feels personal. I’m not part of this collective, but I buy most of my clothes and home decor in shades of pink. I remember two acquaintances coming over to an old apartment during a party, picking up my pink things and joking around with them. I felt a bit on display, sort of in a fun way, sort of not. Thank goodness there’s a place where people get it. I remember an interview with artist Signe Pierce where she says this about pink:
“It’s a way of re-appropriating something that is sold to us from birth,” she told the interviewer. “These colors are often demeaned by people saying they’re ‘girly’. And the word girly is often associated with weakness. I like to take these colors and pair them with a strong persona and reclaim some of the things that have been devalued in society.”
Amy relays an anecdote from a client who bought a bright pink purse to their appointment. The client told her, “If there’s anything that tells you anything about me, it’s this purse and I don’t need to say another thing.”
She laughs as she tells me about the meeting.
“That told me, she’s outside the box,” Amy says. “She’s willing to do something a little bit unusual, a little carefree, and it was a total great statement of just showing me her purse. If she showed me a black purse, it would have said less.”
