Gay flower

The bold bright colors of the flower may have been what triggered the association. Historians recognize this as the first LGBTQ+ pride march, where the symbolism of flowers—representing solidarity, love, and hope—was prominently displayed.

Eight years later, artist Gilbert Baker debuted the now-iconic rainbow flag at the San Francisco pride event.

Literary scholar Sherrie Inness reported in the National Women’s Studies Association Journal that the theme of lesbianism in this play led to an uproar and calls for censorship. “There are many floral symbols besides dyed roses including green carnation, violets, lavender and pansies.”

Prager helps us explore each flower and its history in the LGBTQ+ movement.

However, flowers often have a hot pink shade and are included in the design.

“Flowers have been a part of a coded language within the LBGTQ+ community for centuries,” says  historian Sarah Prager, the author of Rainbow Revolutionaries. The name for the residents of Lesbos – Lesbians – also became associated with women who are romantically and sexually attracted to women in the late 19th century.

Violet sales also plummeted as a result of the association.

However, at the play’s showing in Paris, some women wore the flower on their lapels as a show of support.

In his play, Suddenly Last Summer, Tennessee Williams also weaved violets and its symbolism into the plot by naming a character Mrs. Violet Venable.

Recently, Taylor Swift wrote a song called “Lavender Haze” which took a 50s term of being in love and modernized it.

Ancient Greek poet Sappho, who hailed from the island of Lesbos (the root word of lesbian,) wrote of women and girls frolicking together with garlands of violets in their hair; ever since violets have been associated with female lovers. First cultivated in the 19^th century, the pansy became the symbol for humanist and freethought movements, due to the name coming from the French word for thought, pensée.

But the pansy was also notably used throughout the 20^th century as a somewhat derogatory term for homosexual men.

Along with buttercup, daisy, and other flowery language (including the somewhat nonspecific ‘horticultural lad’), pansy was a term used to refer to gay men, suggesting them to be non-masculine and delicate.

But during the 1920’s and 30’s, the flower lent its name to the Pansy Craze, a brief golden age for drag clubs and gay friendly bars predominantly in the USA.

With prohibition in full swing, the underground club scene in New York became a hot spot for LGBTQ+ nightlife.

In fact, a scandal occurred in 1926 when a female character in the play The Captivesent a bunch of violets to another female character. (See it recreated by our in-house Fleuriste June Jung in Downtown Vancouver, in larger-than-life floral 'Love Hands'). One poet, Renée Vivien, inspired by Sappho and by her first love – a woman named Violet - maintained this motif through both her poetry and her dress: 

in its velvet keep 
Earth holds you; on your forehead violets weep. 

Green carnations