Pink Flamingo Essay

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Pink Flamingo Essay By: Larry Terrell In “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History”, Price elaborates on how the 1950’s gave rise to the famous pink flamingo. She begins by explaining on how the flamingo first came into major popularity. It all started with the Miami Beach’s own “Flamingo” hotel. The hotel was enriched in a beautiful color of bright pink and almost completely flamingo themed. She gives the reasons for a flamingo hotel being ironic as the American culture had changed from “Americans… hunted flamingos to extinction in Florida in the late 1800’s…” to a culture where the flamingo is welcomed and beloved by many. The flamingo had become so popular that motels, restaurants, and even lounges had started to sprout all over the country. The culture change was not only evident in the American ideals of the flamingo but also in the change of American colors. Before the 1950’s the colors of blue, black, and brown were the prominent U.S. colors. However, as the flamingo was introduced, the brilliant colors of pink, bright red, yellow, and even green began to come into the picture as a symbol of the cultural change from times of depression and stress to a time of leisure and relaxation for the entire country. What had once been only an option available for the wealthy high-class of America, vacations had started to open up to even people of the middle-class. The flamingo not only showed that there was a need for change in American lifestyle, but that a time for change in the way Americans behave is now. The flamingo was a motivator of behavior and cultural change in the U.S., and even today it is still the symbol of the essential 1950’s

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