First designed in 1957, the fake birds are natives not of Florida but of Leominster, Massachusetts, which bills itself as the Plastics Capital of the World. At a nearby art school, sculptor Don Featherstone was hired by the plastics company Union Products, where his second assignment was to sculpt a pink flamingo. No live models presented themselves, so he unearthed a National Geographic photo spread. It took about two weeks to model both halves of the bird, brought into the third dimension by then-revolutionary injection-mold technology.
A flamingo-friendly trend was the sameness of post-World War II construction. Units in new subdivisions sometimes looked virtually identical. “You had to mark your house somehow,” Featherstone says. “A woman could pick up a flamingo at the store and come home with a piece of tropical elegance under her arm to change her humdrum house.” Also, “people just thought it was pretty,” adds Featherstone’s wife, Nancy.
That soon changed. Twenty-somethings of the Woodstock era romanticized nature and scorned plastics (à la The Graduate). Cast in flaming pink polyethylene, the flamingo became an emblem of what Nancy delicately calls the “T-word”—tackiness. Sears eventually dropped the tchotchkes from its catalog.
But then, phoenixlike, the flamingo rose from its ashes (or rather, from its pool of molten plastic: As demonstrated at the finale of Waters’ film {Pink Flamingos}, flamingos don’t burn, they melt). As early as the 1960s, pop artists including Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg had begun elevating the low brow and embracing mass culture. And then, of course, Waters’ movie came out.
Re: The Tacky History of the Pink Flamingo
Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2017 6:59 pm
by katarn
We did a writing practice for a similar article once. The point of that one was that the flamingoes became popular because of the boldness of their plastic coloring.
Re: The Tacky History of the Pink Flamingo
Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2017 9:46 pm
by Penner
If I remember correctly, there was an episode of the X-Files where Mulder and Scully went undercover living in an HOA and Mulder decided to place a pink flamingo to send a giant middle finger to the HOA.
Re: The Tacky History of the Pink Flamingo
Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2017 11:09 pm
by heydaralon
Huh. I didn't know those flamingos were plastic. When I saw those on people's lawns, I always assumed they were real birds, though I was confused about how they could stand in a fixed position for so long. I guess it makes sense, because normally birds have feathers and upon closer inspection the flamingos appeared to be shiny and smooth which is not normal for a living animal. In retrospect, the legs were kind of a giveaway too.
Re: The Tacky History of the Pink Flamingo
Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2017 4:37 am
by Fife
I first encountered Pink Flamingos in either 1985 or 1986 at the Hoka Theater. Things haven't been the same since.
Re: The Tacky History of the Pink Flamingo
Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2017 6:58 am
by Ex-California
Penner wrote:If I remember correctly, there was an episode of the X-Files where Mulder and Scully went undercover living in an HOA and Mulder decided to place a pink flamingo to send a giant middle finger to the HOA.
I've had a man crush on David Duchovony my whole life
Re: The Tacky History of the Pink Flamingo
Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2017 9:18 am
by Penner
California wrote:
Penner wrote:If I remember correctly, there was an episode of the X-Files where Mulder and Scully went undercover living in an HOA and Mulder decided to place a pink flamingo to send a giant middle finger to the HOA.
I've had a man crush on David Duchovony my whole life
I haven't followed his career after the X-Files. I only know that outside of the X-Files he is married to Téa Leoni and starred in Californication.
