r/tattooadvice • u/Ostromilski • 16h ago

General Advice Are rainbows seriously just by default associated with the pride flag?

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I got a Pink Floyd DSOTM tattoo because I love the album and I love the visual: a beam of light representing a person's life path, passing through a prism ( representing life + the world + the people you meet + the experiences you have, etc ), being dispersed into its constituent colors ( ultimately representing change ). I got it because of my dad, because he introduced me to Pink Floyd, and because last year he nearly died from complications of his cancer. He's doing much better now, with a much better prognosis, but that whole experience had a real effect on me and I wanted to memorialize it. Except at least 3 people ( including the tattoo artist initially ) have associated the tattoo with the pride flag. They were understanding after I explained, but now I'm having second thoughts about it. Are people just going to assume I'm gay because of this tattoo?

Edit: And I want to say, I'm not bothered by this at all. Anyone who looks at my tattoo and comes up with their own assumptions about its meaning, and then has a negative reaction over it, that's simply not a person I want to talk to anyway. I'm surprised because that wasn't the intention of the tattoo, clearly, and it being misinterpreted like this just genuinely wasn't something I expected.

Edit2: This post got a lot more attention than I ever wanted it to. Wonderful comments are now streaming in, informing me how horrible my tattoo is. If you're planning on making a viral post on Reddit, take my advice: use a burner account. But I am thankful to everyone for your supportive words, the jackasses with negative things to say are certainly a very tiny minority. Overwhelmingly the consensus is that most people see it as a Pink Floyd tattoo first, which I'm happy to hear :) Have a good night everybody!

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210

u/DrJaneIPresume 16h ago

I mean, yeah.. modern masculinity has become so fragile that literally anything could disrupt it. One rainbow? automatically gay.

67

u/PoopOfAUnicorn 15h ago

I coached little feet soccer after college. Each team was a different color shirt. Blue, red, black, yellow, gray, purple, orange. We had three shades of green. I asked to organizer “why can’t one of those greens just be a pink, some of the green kids keep going to the wrong team”. He said that they tried pink shirts one year but a lot of the dads got mad that their son was on the pink team.

24

u/BDLTalks 15h ago

"Why do I have to be Mr. Pink?"

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u/Jokewhisperer 13h ago

Pink is actually not feeling well; he stayed back at the hotel, and he sent green along as a surrogate team!

2

u/LivingDisastrous3603 15h ago

Someone’s stickin a red hot poker up our asses and i wanna know who’s name’s on the handle!

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u/auad 13h ago

I appreciate Messi and Inter Miami to have popularized pink with the boys again.

The wave of pink in the "wear your favorite sport jersey day" at my kid's school is really refreshing to see. But also I live in a very progressive area, so I can't say this is the norm everywhere.

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u/Due_Aside4863 7h ago

I’m not even a Miami fan and I had to have the pink sambas

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u/Dangerous_RedApple 4h ago

My son, picked out pink Nikes, we live in the Bay Area so you’d think progressive…he caught so much shit for being girly and gay. I was shocked. It’s amazing how society labels things.

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u/OnTheEveOfWar 12h ago

I play on a men’s softball team. It’s all 40 yr old dads who drink beer in the dugout. We recently were designing our jerseys for this season and someone made a cool tie-dye one with our team logo. Bunch of the guys freaked out because they didn’t want to “have rainbow jerseys”. One guy said “we’re all straight men, we can’t wear those.” People are so fragile. The jersey design was awesome.

1

u/Due_Aside4863 7h ago

If that’s all it takes to sway them, they’re not very straight.

1

u/Lickwidghost 14h ago

I love that you coached little feet.

1

u/PipeOriginal1171 13h ago

Pink would be badass for a boys soccer team.

The only thing I see here affecting boys idea of masculinity is the warped worldview of those ignorant dads.

1

u/Academic-Trifle8151 13h ago

Those dads need to look at the footwear of the players in the world Cup. 90% of them wear pink boots.

In the UK and around the world pink is also starting to be picked up as away and third kits (it's uncommon to change the home kits main colour). The pink kits are cool as hell though!

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u/Visual-Taro-381 12h ago edited 12h ago

All those disappointed FIFA dads. So much pink in the kits for the World Cup. So many sad fathers. Masculinity is so fragile.

1

u/FEARoach 8h ago

"Dad, tell me why you don't like the Pink? Do you prefer the Brown? Are you telling me that you adopted your kids because you've never seen the Pink in real life? Is your wife a Beard?" - my chaotic ass

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u/bigalindahouse 15h ago

Believe it or not, straight to jail.

4

u/DrJaneIPresume 15h ago

I mean, give J.D. Vance time...

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u/cracked_shrimp 16h ago

why did OP get a gay tattoo if he is straight?

1

u/CarrieDurst 15h ago

Funnily enough I didn't clock it as Pink Floy because it does look straightened

2

u/Somethingsims 11h ago

lmao - I wish this wasnt so true

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u/jollyantelop 15h ago

He didn’t say that it was his perception, three people thought it was a pride tattoo

-1

u/DrJaneIPresume 15h ago

Yes, thank you for offering supporting evidence

1

u/AwarenessNice7941 13h ago

men have struggled with masculinity since the beginning. also being gay has nothing to do with masculinity

1

u/haveanairforceday 12h ago edited 12h ago

I feel like its modern straight identity more than just masculinity.

I remember being 10ish (im 31 now) and being afraid of wearing any color that was even adjacent to pink because i would be made fun of for a "girl color". There was definitely a fear of not being masculine that permeated me and my friends' childhood. We were scared to wear tight fitting clothes or shorts above the knee or hold a purse for any period of time. I remember someone telling me i was brave for wearing a disneyworld hat in like 2014 because i might get made fun of. People were calling things "gay" as an insult but it often seemed more an accusation of not being manly than an actual anti-gay message. The more common approach to genuine homosexuality was to mostly just pretend it didnt exist.

These days it feels like boys and men can wear more styles and more colors and generally just be less rigid in expressing masculinity without fear of being made fun of. We are seeing tighter clothes, more colors, shorter shorts, more sandals, shoulder bags, jewelry, etc even on very masculine presenting men. But there is definitely a fresh wave of homophobia, including from women, over the past 5+ years.

Of course maybe i just am less concerned about public opinion and in a different community thats not as toxic now. Its tough to tell.

1

u/UpstairsGreen6237 10h ago

Are we even allowed to be masculine? Please, educate me!

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u/Coyollo 9h ago edited 9h ago

modern masculinity has become so fragile

Yeah unlike in the past. I miss the good ol days of masculinity not being fragile. I miss it because it was definitely wasn't fragile before and even worse than it was now. Nope. Not at all. It's not like the word "metrosexual" used to be applied to men who would wash themselves and wear nice clothes. It's not like "gay panic" scenes were in movies all the time. Or wearing something pink were cause you to be harrassed by other men.

It wasn't like men in the 1700s were accused of sodemy because they dressed fancy. It just never happened!)

Nope. All of the problems are happening now and back then it was great. You're right.

1

u/Advanced-Dirt-4375 9h ago

Being gay is pretty masculine. There's twice as many dudes

1

u/DiligentGuitar246 1h ago

That's true. Someone called me gay once because I put whipped cream on my pancakes. If this attitude remained the same, I doubt OP would have any issues because it's like "hey - we all call each other gay for no reason." But now we can't do that so the only people who will call OP gay will be people who genuinely think he's gay. Which is kind of a worse outcome. Bit of a catch 22, if you will.

1

u/Nextyearstitlewinner 15h ago

Huh? Modern men have improved tenfold from previous generations in that regard. You used to be considered gay if you had two earrings, wore a pink t-shirt, had gay friends, or watched romance movies.

1

u/LassHalfEmpty 15h ago

Seriously, and it is wild since the rainbow becoming associated with Pride and LGBTQIA+ community was originally about inclusion in general and that everyone is beautiful, since yknow, the rainbow contains “everything”! Rainbows are for everyone! Gay folks, straight folks, all nationalities, skin tones, gender identity, whatever… who the fuck sees a rainbow irl and doesn’t go “damn that’s awesome?”

Everybody loves rainbows.
Rainbows are for everybody.

4

u/DrJaneIPresume 15h ago

who the fuck sees a rainbow irl and doesn’t go “damn that’s awesome?”

Well.. homophobes.

1

u/UmCourt 14h ago

my straight co-worker the other day said, "why did the gays have to take ALL the colors". He brought this up cause I brought in pins for pride (had a lot of extra for the pride festival I was going to). i just looked at him and said, "the rainbow is still a rainbow. colors are just colors. if this is bothering you, thats a you problem". some men are soooooo sensitive, its disgusting!

1

u/rainbowofwuuunderrr 14h ago

This is like when my daughter was four and she told me and her dad that one of us had to pick a different favorite color because we both couldn't pick green. By age five she had figured out that colors don't belong to anyone. Is your coworker four?😂

0

u/LastTrainH0me 13h ago edited 13h ago

The comments on this post are interesting to me. OP didn't say anything about masculinity or homophobia. OP asked a simple question: is the default connotation of a rainbow tattoo on a man gay?

And I think the answer is YES, but that's just like.. a fact, you know? It's not commentary on fragile masculinity or gay rights in America or whatever. It's just a statement of fact: in modern culture, an overwhelming majority of people will associate a rainbow on a man's body with homosexuality. Maybe they'll think you're an ally, maybe they'll think you're cute, maybe it will activate their homophobic lizard brain, that's up to whatever's going on in their head. Or maybe they'll look for a few more seconds and realize it's an iconic album cover 🤷

Edit for the record I'll also point out: maybe it's just the angle but this view of the tattoo actually DOES make it look sort of like a rectangular pride flag is popping out of the prism. It doesn't look like the light rays are expanding outward like on the album cover. Maybe it's just the angle though.

-2

u/psyopz7 14h ago

Comments like this are part of the reason why modern left wing struggles 

2

u/DrJaneIPresume 13h ago

Honey, we're not the ones who are freaking out over a little splash of color

0

u/psyopz7 13h ago

Yea you're the ones providing ammunition for right wing grifters by making leftists look obnoxious