Human Flower Project

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

For Those with Pink Thumbs

On the rollercoaster of taste, the lawn flamingo—America’s ersatz flower—has enjoyed a 48-year ride.

In Lieu of a Flower Garden
Photo: Pink Flamingos

At a garden center on the rich side of Austin, Texas, where all personal vehicles are war-ready and the children blond, a hillside is covered most of the year with pink plastic flamingos. Rumor had it that when Bill Clinton was last in town, he dropped by and bought two of the yard birds. On our walk this morning we spotted six of them, each tilting on one leg in a yard otherwise dignified (and dull), covered in English ivy.

Okay, so they’re not flowers. But as this neighbor realizes they add a shock of color to the flower-challenged lawn, an easy out for those of us with too much shade, too harsh sun or too little energy. Plus Emily Young of the Sentinel and Enterprise (Massachusetts) has an article today about the pink plastic flamingo’s creator, Donald Featherstone. Featherstone studied art and then went to work for Union Products, where he was asked to design 3-D lawn ornaments for the booming suburbanite market of the 1950s. Featherstone came up with 700 ideas. He preferred a plastic ostrich but the public overwhelmingly went for the flamingo. “His muse was an Oct. 1957 National Geographic cover, which featured ballerinas in pink.”

The flamingo may have once been a whimsy, something to watch over the wading pool and distract from all that bare yard, but it has since become an object of cultural analysis and, as the Clinton purchase suggests, an item of nostalgia.

Featherstone’s wife Nancy contends, “When the flamingo turned 30, it graduated its status level and the wealthy took it over. It wasn’t tacky anymore, it was trendy.”

Which flamingo has the feather?

We’re not so sure, Nancy. Shifts in cultural status can be on the order of “graduation,” but the flamingo seems more of a transfer student—from low-class to camp. We’ll leave this matter to the Taste Police, and urge both chief officers and beat cops thereof to write in.

To boot, we offer more pink flamingo photos and stuff, plus this call for a boycott of “fake” fake pink flamingos (the arbiters of consumption will not be denied!). Here also is a tremendously silly site On Stagnant Pond, recommended if you’re having a somber day.