Pink Lesbian Flag

Overview

To serve as a broader lesbian flag than the lipstick-specific original, though the initial removal may have been a practical decision rather than a political one.

Emerged as a community derivative of the Lipstick Lesbian Flag, with the kiss mark removed. The earliest documented appearance is a Tumblr compilation post by @trans-wife on December 8, 2013; the same blog posted it again on January 10, 2014, claiming it was 'seeing use at the time.' A DeviantArt post by @lovemystarfire on April 18, 2014 included the variant. The lesbianflaghistory blog (2019) notes they would be 'extremely interested to see any evidence of this flag being used pre-2012,' suggesting the variant did not circulate meaningfully before late 2012 at the earliest. The standard account is that the removal broadened the flag's use beyond lipstick-lesbian styling, but the lesbianflaghistory blog argues the first instance of the mark being excluded was technical (the emblem was too complex to convert into a high-resolution vector image) and that the broadening interpretation was applied retroactively by community users. ^[1][2]

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

lesbian

Creators

Attribution notes

Creator unknown. The kiss mark was removed from the Lipstick Lesbian Flag by an unknown person. The earliest documented kissless version appeared in a Tumblr pride flag compilation post by @trans-wife on December 8, 2013. A January 10, 2014 post on the same blog also featured it. In 2015, Tumblr user @kiloueka uploaded a high-resolution version to the Pride-Flags DeviantArt account, clarifying they had seen a kissless version in a Tumblr post and did not independently create the concept. The removal was pragmatic (the kiss mark was too complex for high-resolution reproduction), not political. ^[2][3]

Origin

Digital Origin

Community internet circulation

Digital origin; no verified physical location.

Derivative community adaptation of the Lipstick Lesbian Flag after removal of the kiss mark. The lesbianflaghistory blog traces the earliest known appearance to December 8, 2013, on Tumblr. The removal appears to have emerged independently through multiple people omitting the kiss mark when reproducing the flag, rather than through a single deliberate act. ^[2]

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

2010

Period in Use

2010–present

The flag remained relatively obscure until October 2015, when the Pride-Flags DeviantArt account posted high-resolution versions that omitted the kiss mark for practical reproduction reasons. In 2016, a Tumblr post using the pink flag image and captioned 'the lesbian flag is so pretty why don't we use it more' went viral, accumulating 82,784 notes and launching the flag into semi-common usage, still mostly confined to younger online communities. The lesbianflaghistory blog states the pink flag 'has only been in semi-common usage since 2016.' Physical use at pride marches remained limited; most lesbians at events opt for the rainbow flag, the interlocking Venus symbol, or other symbols. The flag later became one of the two direct source families for the orange-pink redesign wave, providing the pink-side palette that Emily Gwen combined with butch-coded orange tones in 2018. ^[1][2]

The kissless variant had a distinct social role from the Lipstick Lesbian Flag and a distinct influence path into the orange-pink redesign family. It sits between the McCray design and the sunset redesign in the lineage: the subcommunity emblem was removed, and the remaining palette became the pink-side source material for Emily Gwen's later redesign. This makes it worth preserving as its own record despite having no credited creator and no documented intention.

Lineage

Evolved from

Lipstick Lesbian Flag

Indirect influences

Labrys Lesbian Flag

Direct children

Sunset Lesbian Flag, Orange-Pink Lesbian Precursor (2017)

Related flags

Butch Lesbian Flag (Butchspace, 2017), Non-Girl Lesbian Flag, Sapphic Flag

Sits directly after the Lipstick Lesbian Flag and directly before the orange-pink branch in the lineage. The pink-side source for the later orange-pink line. Without this flag, the lipstick-to-sunset transition makes no design sense: the McCray palette, stripped of its subcommunity emblem, is what Emily Gwen later combined with butch-flag orange tones. For the full lineage synthesis (lipstick to pink to butch to shapeshifter to Emily Gwen to taqwomen), see emily-gwen-2018-orange-pink-lesbian-flag.

Lineage tree

Every record reachable from this one through documented parent and child relationships: 5 records across 4 generations.

Ancestor

Lipstick Lesbian Flag

This record

Pink Lesbian Flag

Children

Orange-Pink Lesbian Precursor (2017), Sunset Lesbian Flag

Generation 3

Five-Stripe Sunset Lesbian Flag

Colors & Symbolism

A femininity-coded gradient flag used as a broader lesbian symbol than the lipstick-specific original.

Circulating community reconstruction

This flag has no official digital palette. Color values shown are approximate.

The pink lesbian flag inherits its color palette directly from the lipstick lesbian flag (McCray, 2010), with the kiss mark removed. McCray did not publish stripe meanings for the original, and no meanings have been published for the kissless variant. The lesbianflaghistory blog (2019) argues the kiss removal was a practical decision, not a political one, the original mark was difficult to convert into a high-resolution vector image. ^[2]

Same stripe colors as the Lipstick Lesbian Flag. No official creator-published hex specification.

Design

Aspect Ratio

8:5

Orientation

horizontal

Stripe Count

7

Layout

horizontal_stripes

Stripes (Top → Bottom)

Dark Magenta, Medium Magenta-Pink, Light Magenta-Pink, White, Light Pink-Red, Medium Pink-Red, Dark Red

Seven horizontal stripes in a pink-to-white-to-red gradient without the lipstick emblem. Identical stripe colors to the Lipstick Lesbian Flag, but without the kiss mark.

Usage & Adoption

Current Status

active

Served as a transitional design between the Lipstick Lesbian Flag and the later orange-pink redesigns, but is not the dominant current flag.

Discourse & Debates

• Whether the kiss mark was removed as a deliberate broadening act or for practical image-conversion reasons. The lesbianflaghistory Tumblr blog (2019) argues the first removal was technical, not political, and that the broadening interpretation was applied retroactively by users. If accurate, the pink flag's social role as a 'wider lesbian symbol' was community-assigned, not designer-intended, raising the question of whether community adoption can create meaning that an absent creator never provided.
• Whether the pink flag deserves its own archival entry or is simply the lipstick flag with the emblem removed. Library.LGBT is the only comparison database that gives it a standalone page ('Lesbian (Alternate)'). HRC, Colorado, and Outright do not mention it at all. This database treats it as a separate record because it occupied a distinct social role and a distinct position in the lineage: it is the direct palette source for the later orange-pink redesign. The question of whether a modified flag is a new flag or the same flag is not settled by any comparison source.

Common misidentifications

• Often confused with the Lipstick Lesbian Flag if the kiss distinction is ignored

Common confusions

• The Lipstick version with kiss mark is a separate record, not this flag with an emblem added

Criticisms

• The flag inherited the controversy surrounding Natalie McCray, designer of the parent Lipstick Lesbian Flag. McCray's blog contained racist and biphobic posts, and because the pink flag retains her color palette, some community members view it as tainted by association regardless of the kiss mark removal. ^[2][3]
• The all-pink palette was criticized as centering femininity and excluding butch and gender-nonconforming lesbians. This critique was one of the driving factors behind the later orange-pink redesign family, which introduced warm tones specifically to broaden the flag's visual coding beyond lipstick-lesbian aesthetics. ^[3][4]

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

without kiss mark

• The Pink Lesbian Flag, a kissless derivative of the Lipstick Lesbian Flag. The seven-stripe pink-to-white-to-red gradient retains the same color palette as McCray's original but omits the lipstick kiss mark. The earliest documented appearance is a Tumblr compilation post by @trans-wife on December 8, 2013. · Community reconstruction