Welcome to the Tweed Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl. And you are tuned in to Tweed Trends.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Today I want to talk about hashtag Pink Takeover. Let's get started. Hello there and welcome back to Tweed Trends.
Today we are talking about hashtag Pink Takeover. So if you are a black or brown female and you haven't heard of Pink Takeover, never fear is not too late. We'll fill you in. If you are not a black or brown female and you haven't heard of Pink Takeover, but you're wondering what in the world I'm talking about, don't worry, I got you.
I'm going to explain it all in today's episode. Now, if you don't fall into either of those categories, let's say you are not a black or brown female and you have heard of Pink Takeover, great. However, if the idea or the concept of Pink Takeover bothers you, then I really don't know what to tell you other than you might not want to listen to today's episode because that's all I'm talking about. I'm going to talk about what it is, why it is, and what some of the backlash has been in regards to it as well.
So let's go ahead and dive right in. When I first started thinking about this topic, I said, oh, you know, it's going to be easy to explain this. And then the more I started thinking about it, I'm like, well, wait, no, it's not quite as cut and dry as what one might think that it is. Because simply, we have to go back in time to get a full understanding of where this whole thing came from.
So if you are on TikTok, then you probably already know and can join right in on the conversation. And by all means, definitely, please do so. I would love to hear what you have to say about this. Now, if you are not on TikTok, then there's a very high likelihood that you don't know what in the world Pink Takeover is, and you would be walking around on Friday wondering how come everything is so pink around you.
We're going to explain all of that. But first, let's go back in time. Back to the year 2022. On TikTok, there's a creator, and she goes by mom to the king.
That's M-O-M-T-O-T-H-E-K-I-N-G. She started a black girl follow train. And if you're wondering like, what in the world is that? It's a thing where she said, if you are a black girl, and you follow me, I will follow you back.
This is nothing new on Instagram, on Twitter, especially on Twitter. I used to see it on Twitter all the time, where you would have people posting things like, follow for follow, basically meaning, if you follow me, I'll follow you. Now, that type of social media activity isn't necessarily the greatest type of activity, because especially on places like Twitter, where it's a follow for follow, I can follow somebody. My numbers can be humongous, but when you look at my thread, and I'm saying stuff, and nobody's saying anything back to me, nobody's liking it, nobody's commenting, nobody's sharing, well, that's a little suspect, because now it almost looks like you have bots as friends, and somebody sent them in to join you, but there's no conversation happening.
But anyway, so mom to the king, she created a black girl follow train, and that had some people upset in their feelings, because they had a problem with it, because they felt like it was discriminatory. I don't understand how something personal to myself discriminates against somebody else. It's not like she was giving out money or jobs. She was simply saying, if you are black, and you follow my personal page, I will follow your personal page back, and she kind of suggested that other people do the same, and they did like wildfire.
Now, the same creator, she also supports black businesses. She has a regular thing that she does where she will highlight a black business. Okay, that's a part of her presence on TikTok. She also does a whole lot of other stuff, so it's not just this one branded thing that she does.
She does all the things, right? So it starts with mom to the king. Then a little bit later down the line, we come to Crafty Ho. That's at C-R-A-F-T-Y-H-E-A-U-X-X, Crafty Ho.
Now, Crafty Ho used a sound with hers, and so once again, if you're not on TikTok, this may be completely foreign to you, but what creators will do is they'll have like a sound bed, a song, a something going on in the background of a video. And what she did was she took a glow-rilla and hot kid song, FNF. Look it up if you wanna know what FNF stands for. But she took that song and created another follow trend.
And that caught people's attention as well. Hers, I think, was more along the lines of because it was a song that a lot of people like. It's not an empowerment song, but it kinda sorta is, you know, yeah, it's like the Ratchet Empowerment song. It's just my own personal views on it.
But empowerment nonetheless. So now that all happened in 22. So then now let's keep moving down the line. Then there's Jasmine.
So Jasmine, in seeing all of the commotion about the black girl follow train, she says, what if we do something like this and use a color to kinda stand out? Then another young lady by the name of Cat, she came along and said, okay, sure, let's do a color, but let's also support black owned businesses with that color while we're doing that whole color thing, right? Then on top of that, Shana, from Shop the Hood, she comes along and says, oh, black businesses, that's my lane. Let's do this.
So then she starts pumping it, pumping it, pumping it. And that's brought us to where we are today. Where are we exactly, you may be asking? Well, right now we're on the doorstep of a color coordinated community based group activity.
And that color that it all revolves around is pink. So come Friday, if you happen to be going in some place and start to notice that you're seeing a whole lot of pink out there, also take notice of who's rocking the pink. And nine times out of ten, it's gonna be a black or brown woman. The idea initially was attached to hair.
So as Jasmine was explaining her views on what she saw, she was like, you know what, I want us to stand out like a sore thumb because so often society expects us to suppress ourselves so that we can fit in and not make other people feel uncomfortable, especially when it comes to our hair. So rather than conforming, let's just create a revolutionary act. Let's do something bold and brave and in your face. Let's all wear pink hair.
Well, some people were kind of like, I don't know about the pink hair thing. How about if we just do pink? Just pink stuff. And that works too.
The idea though is for us to come together and do something as a group to show support for each other, to show solidarity. And possibly to even heal the young black and brown girls within us that maybe in younger or earlier days, we didn't feel like we could challenge the system. But now that we're stronger and we're wiser and we have that confidence. Now let's do something.
Let's show off a little. You know, let's show what we can do when we rally behind each other to support. So that was the initial look. The initial look was pink hair.
It kind of morphed into pink, whatever, you know, pink scarves, hijab, all the things, nails, what have you, clothes. Now we move down the line a little bit further. So that was at I am Jasmine or at JE.M-I-N-I-E on IG. Then there's cat.
So cat is at cat doing the most at K-A-T-D-O-I-N-T-H-E M-O-S-T. She threw in the support of our businesses. Well, bring it. Let's do this.
So even in the lead up to this day, there are a number of black and brown female business owners that are saying that they have seen an increase in the foot traffic and purchases in their little, you know, moms and pop stores. And it's due to this lead up to the pink takeover. So then once again, I told you there was a third person. So now there's Shauna and she's at Shop the Hood.
That's at SHOP, T-H-O-D. She has a TV show where she highlights black businesses the most, but it's also a black and brown minority, what have you. But it's with an extra emphasis on black businesses. And then she grabbed a hold of it and was like, you know what?
I gotta tell somebody. Thanks for joining me for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope now that when you see a bunch of women on Friday rockin' pink that you're not alarmed, but instead you're aware of what's happening.
Now, I didn't want to spend too much time on the negativity that's floating out there about this, but I do want to mention that there are some negative nancies out there that have a problem with the pink takeover because they feel that it's racist simply because it all initially way back stemmed from a black girl following train. And honestly and truthfully, I don't understand how who I choose to follow on my social media, who I choose to support business-wise. I don't understand how any of that makes a person racist. Because just because I participate with the pink takeover and the black girl followed train doesn't mean that I'm not also following people from other backgrounds on my social media pages.
One doesn't have anything to do with the other, so just because we decided that we wanted to do something among ourselves for ourselves, that doesn't have anything to do with you. It's not all about you. Simple and plain. That point blank period end of story.
It doesn't always have to be about you. But there are people out there that are complaining and they're talking about well, we feel like we have to have everything separate, so maybe we need to go back to segregation because we've got our black schools and you don't see us running around with white schools. Oh, but we do. They're called PWIs, predominantly white institutions.
Because you cannot believe that an HBCU is 100% black because they're not white people go to PWIs just like they go to HBCUs and other nationalities to make it plain and simple. So to me, it's the ignorant speaking, kind of like when people get drunk and they're like, oh, it's alcohol talking, it's the ignorance talking, and we just kind of have to close our ears, walk on by, keep it pushing, and continue to do what we're going to do, to continue to support each other, and yeah, if this goes well, I guarantee you there'll be more. There's actually two more dates already set. I don't know the color yet, but I'll keep you posted.