{"id":5275,"date":"2018-01-19T03:44:14","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T08:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=5275"},"modified":"2018-01-21T03:18:28","modified_gmt":"2018-01-21T08:18:28","slug":"pussyhat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/01\/19\/pussyhat\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pink Pussyhat\u2014Icon Of The Women\u2019s Marches\u2014Is Featured At Fuller Craft Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

One year after hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets in Women\u2019s Marches across the nation to signal their opposition to the Trump administration, Brockton\u2019s Fuller Craft Museum is opening an exhibition of the homespun pink pussyhats that became icons of the protests.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really became so much more than these hats on that one day,\u201d says Beth C. McLaughlin, the museum\u2019s chief curator and organizer of \u201cRevolution in the Making: The Pussyhat Project,\u201d<\/a> on view at the museum from Jan. 20 to May 20, 2018. \u201cIt quickly became the symbol of protest culture. \u2026 It quickly became the symbol of the resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

A year ago, McLaughlin herself had just returned inspired from participating in the Women\u2019s March on Washington. For the first time since being devastated by Trump\u2019s election, she recalls, she began to feel hope again. \u201cHere were all these millions of people. We\u2019re going to be able to fight this. This feeling of solidarity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pussyhat phenomenon was a powerful mass statement that Trump\u2019s sexism and sexual harassment was wrong and that you were not alone in feeling that way. The hat was a way to find each other and show how many stood in resistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pussyhat had risen to the top of pop culture and was such an important moment for craft history and craftivism,\u201d McLaughlin says. She \u201crealized we need to collect those.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pussyhats<\/a>
Pussyhats by Rachel Shannon Brown (left) and Kathleen Doherty. (Courtesy of Fuller Craft Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Pussyhat Project was begun by a group of Los Angeles women\u2014screenwriter Krista Suh and architect Jayna Zweiman with pattern help from their local knitting shop owner, Kat Coyle\u2014around Thanksgiving 2016. They were responding to Trump\u2019s election and his notorious comments about the liberties male stars can take with women\u2014\u201cGrab them by the pussy. You can do anything.\u201d\u2014that were caught on a hot mic during a 2005 \u201cAccess Hollywood\u201d television interview. The Pussyhat Project was part of a larger effort to reclaim and transform Trump\u2019s insult into a statement of defiant power\u2014often using the \u201cThis pussy grabs back\u201d slogan.<\/p>\n

Pussyhat Project organizers shared a purposely simple cat-ear pattern that became an international, viral phenomenon. \u201cThe point of such a simple pattern was that everyone could do it,\u201d McLaughlin says. \u201cThere was so much welcoming and accessibility that went into the design.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MAGA<\/a>
MAGA hat (left) and test knit hat for the pussycat pattern, donated by Stefanie Kamerman of the Pussycat Project. (Courtesy of Fuller Craft Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A year ago, the Fuller Craft Museum decided to preserve some of the phenomenon. They put out a call seeking pussyhat donations to create an archive of what the museum calls \u201cthe largest example of social activism through craft (craftivism) in U.S. modern history.\u201d<\/p>\n

McLaughlin says, \u201cThe response was so overwhelming from people who were so excited to give us their hats. There was this hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

The museum collected 65 hats, including \u201cthe original test pattern hat from the Pussyhat Project,\u201d McLaughlin says. The exhibit also features an American flag pussyhat, a rainbow hat, hats that say \u201cResist\u201d and \u201cPersist,\u201d \u201cbrain hats,\u201d knit and crocheted and sewn hats. The exhibit also includes signs from the marches. \u201cWe\u2019re really trying to share the voices of the march,\u201d McLaughlin says. One case compares the pussyhat with the Trump campaign\u2019s iconic red \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d baseball cap. \u201cIt really was this individualized effort that collectively made this big statement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pussyhats<\/a>
Pussyhats by Hila Happy Knits (left) and Fedora Jacobson. (Courtesy of Fuller Craft Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Beginning yesterday, the museum began offering an additional display of a few hundred pussyhats contributed by Vermont curator Beth Miller. \u201cThe donors would like for these hats to go back out into the world,\u201d McLaughlin says. \u201cPeople will be welcome to take them with them.\u201d And wear them in marches this weekend.<\/p>\n

At 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 21, McLaughlin will moderate a panel discussion at the museum entitled \u201cMake Against the Machine: Needlecraft and the Resistance.\u201d Speakers will include Pussyhat Project co-creator Jayna Zweiman; Virginia Johnson, owner of Cambridge stitch-lounge Gather Here; local fiber artist and craftivist Adrienne Sloane; and Sue Bleiweiss of The Artist Circle Alliance and curator of the museum\u2019s \u201cThreads of Resistance\u201d exhibition.<\/p>\n

McLaughlin says the exhibit touches on accusations that the pink of the hats excluded some communities. Zweiman\u2014who grew up in Needham and studied at Providence\u2019s Rhode Island School of Design before moving to Los Angeles\u2014recently wrote<\/a>: \u201cThere are some people who have felt invisible because of this project. Some have interpreted pink hats with cat ears as white women\u2019s vulvas. Not all women have pussies. Not all pussies are pink. Our intent was and always will be to support all women.\u201d<\/p>\n

McLaughlin says, \u201cIt was supposed to look like a cat, a play on words, because Donald Trump said, \u2018Grab them by the pussy.\u2019 \u2026 It was to carry on this tradition of craftivism. They picked that color of femininity, because it represents tenderness, to really reclaim that color, not as a symbol of weakness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Help us keep producing our great coverage of local arts by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Pussyhats.<\/a>
Pussyhats. (Courtesy of Fuller Craft Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One year after hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets in Women\u2019s Marches across the nation to signal their opposition to the Trump administration, Brockton\u2019s Fuller Craft Museum is opening an exhibition of the homespun pink pussyhats that became icons of the protests. \u201cIt really became so much more than these hats on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5283,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,100],"tags":[227,228,98,226,229],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5275"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5275"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5413,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5275\/revisions\/5413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}