Story by Julia Bratu
Photos by Monica Escamillia
We take great pride in our incredibly diverse city and campus at RCFU, and strive to be sure we celebrate our differences by promoting positive depictions of people from all walks of life. Our own team is also full of people of all different backgrounds, so it is exciting to be able to take part in working on photoshoots and articles that truly make a difference in our community. We decided that one of the best ways to show our support for diversity in the Richmond area was to do a LGBTQ+ pride photoshoot, particularly emphasizing the history and importance of the pride flag, showcasing what it truly means to be a member of this beautiful and culturally rich community.
The pride flag was originally conceived and designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, a gay artist and civil rights activist, with 8 colors- including pink! The flag was then reduced to seven colors when it was found that pink was not a commercially available color.
It would have stayed that way were it not for the need for an even amount of colors in order to cover both sides of the street during a parade to demonstrate solidarity after the assassination Harvey Milk, San Francisco’s first openly gay supervisor. So, they dropped indigo. The other colors managed to stick, and now we have the six-color version commonly seen flown today to represent the LGBTQ+ community.
Each outfit that we styled was chosen to be coordinated to one of the pride colors. Although the six-color variation of the flag features red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, we decided that we wanted to pay homage to the flag’s history so we also included pink as one of our colors.
Each color has a different personality, making each look different. Each of the colors helps illustrate the strong, spirited community that has come together in the past century to celebrate our difference as one.
Sources:
“History of the Gay Pride / Rainbow Flag.” Flags of the World. June 28, 2015. Accessed December 16, 2016. https://flagspot.net/flags/qq-rb_h.html.
“History & Colors of the Rainbow Flag – Mid-South Pride.” Mid-South Pride Inc. 2016. Accessed December 16, 2016. http://midsouthpride.org/history-colors-of-the-rainbow-flag/.
We take great pride in our incredibly diverse city and campus at RCFU, and strive to be sure we celebrate our differences by promoting positive depictions of people from all walks of life. Our own team is also full of people of all different backgrounds, so it is exciting to be able to take part in working on photoshoots and articles that truly make a difference in our community. We decided that one of the best ways to show our support for diversity in the Richmond area was to do a LGBTQ+ pride photoshoot, particularly emphasizing the history and importance of the pride flag, showcasing what it truly means to be a member of this beautiful and culturally rich community.
The pride flag was originally conceived and designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, a gay artist and civil rights activist, with 8 colors- including pink! The flag was then reduced to seven colors when it was found that pink was not a commercially available color.
It would have stayed that way were it not for the need for an even amount of colors in order to cover both sides of the street during a parade to demonstrate solidarity after the assassination Harvey Milk, San Francisco’s first openly gay supervisor. So, they dropped indigo. The other colors managed to stick, and now we have the six-color version commonly seen flown today to represent the LGBTQ+ community.
Each outfit that we styled was chosen to be coordinated to one of the pride colors. Although the six-color variation of the flag features red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, we decided that we wanted to pay homage to the flag’s history so we also included pink as one of our colors.
Each color has a different personality, making each look different. Each of the colors helps illustrate the strong, spirited community that has come together in the past century to celebrate our difference as one.
Sources:
“History of the Gay Pride / Rainbow Flag.” Flags of the World. June 28, 2015. Accessed December 16, 2016. https://flagspot.net/flags/qq-rb_h.html.
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“History & Colors of the Rainbow Flag – Mid-South Pride.” Mid-South Pride Inc. 2016. Accessed December 16, 2016. http://midsouthpride.org/history-colors-of-the-rainbow-flag/.