PRIDE Rainbow Earrings

Heart Dangle Earrings 4, 3, or 2 | Stainless Rainbow Chip Hoops | Gold Rainbow Chip Hoops | Gold Rainbow Stripes | Stainless Rainbow Stripes

You may be familiar with the rainbow-striped Pride flag. In recent years, this flag has been updated and expanded to represent the intersectional diversity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and Two-Spirit (LGBTQIA2-S) communities.

Before rainbow-striped Pride flag, many LGBTQIA2-S communities used a pink triangle as visual representation. This was adapted from badge that gay prisoners were forced to wear in Nazi concentration camps. Perhaps the most well-known usage of the pink triangle symbol was by ACT-UP during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Other symbols used by LGBTQIA2-S groups include green carnations, purple hand prints, Greek symbol lambda, blue feathers, and ace playing cards.

In the late 1970s, Harvey Milk – a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the first openly gay man elected to public office – asked his friend Gilbert Baker to design a symbol to represent (what was then referred to as) the gay community. Baker collaborated with his friend Lynn Segerblom (also known as Faerie Argyle Rainbow) to design the rainbow-striped flag with eight colors.

Baker and Segerblom’s flag debuted at the Gay Freedom Day Parade in SF in 1978. Each of the original eight colors had their own unique symbolism. Hot pink: sex; Red: life; Orange: healing; Yellow: sunlight; Green: nature; Turquoise: magic and art; Indigo: serenity; and Violet: spirit. The original flag’s hot pink and turquoise stripes were soon removed because of difficulty manufacturing and/or dying the fabric, resulting in the six-color rainbow flag we are familiar with today.

Many groups within the LGBTQIA2-S community have their own Pride flags. There are specific flags celebrating the identities of transgender, bisexual, lesbian, pansexual, asexual, and other communities. Still, the rainbow-striped flag has historically been the most used and recognized symbol representing Pride for the LGBTQIA2-S community overall.