"The Pussyhat has become an immediately recognisable expression of female solidarity"
By Anna Pujol-Mazzini
LONDON, March 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A pink hat worn during the women's march on Washington has taken its place in history as a symbol of solidarity for women's rights by going on display in a London museum.
In January, women-led protests against U.S. President Donald Trump saw hundreds of thousands of women take to the streets in American cities as well as Sydney, London, Tokyo and other cities across Europe and Asia.
Many wore knitted pink cat-eared "pussyhats," a reference to Trump's boast in a 2005 video made public during the election campaign about grabbing women's genitals.
The Victoria and Albert Museum, a top tourist attraction in the British capital, is now showcasing a hat knitted by Jayna Zweiman, the co-founder of the Pussyhat project, which called on people to turn the women's march into a "sea of pink."
"The Pussyhat has become an immediately recognisable expression of female solidarity and symbol of the power of collective action," Corinna Gardner, a curator at the museum, said in a statement.
"This modest pink hat is a material thing that through its design enables us to raise questions about our current political and social circumstance," she added.
The founders of the project, Jayna Zweiman and Krista Suh, called on people around the world to make the "pussyhats" for those attending the march, which took place the day after Trump's inauguration.
They asked volunteers around the world to help sew, crochet or knit pink hats with ears by using simple patterns available on the project's website.
The Victoria and Albert Museum's "rapid response collection," which explores the impact of current events on art, also features a burkini, a flag designed for the first refugee team to compete in the 2016 Olympic Games, and a Vote Leave campaign leaflet distributed in the run-up to Britain's referendum on EU membership.
(Reporting by Anna Pujol-Mazzini @annapmzn, Editing by Ros Russell. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)
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