Moderator: Moderator: Marlén Ríos-Hernández, California State University, Fullerton
Elena Romero, “Hip Hop and Pink: How the Color Transcended Gender, Sexuality, and Multiple Generations One Hue at a Time”
Whether its bubble gum, Mylanta, hot, or florescent, hip hop has fallen in love with the color pink. While it appears that this is a recent phenomenon, one can trace early roots in hip hop for several decades. Pink, historically coded as feminine in Western culture, has emerged as a symbol of disruption within this framework. This presentation explores the evolving relationship between hip hop and pink, examining how its adoption by artists and audiences challenges traditional notions of masculinity, identity, and aesthetics in urban culture.
From early resistance to pink’s associations with vulnerability and softness to its modern reappropriation as a statement of power and confidence, hip hop has redefined the color’s place in cultural narratives. Acceptability in pink was ushered with Lil Kim and pushed the likes of the Black Barbie herself Nicki Minaj, celebrating 10 years of The PinkPrint album.
While Harlem rapper Cam’ron has been almost synonymous with hip hop’s thrust into pink, it was an Atlanta-based rap duo names Outkast that introduced pink and its Southern flair to fans in 2001 and kept it constant throughout their career. Both Andre “3000” Benjamin (formerly known as Dré) and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton of Outkast wore pink in different ways yet complimented their individual style. Big Boi had a more street, pimp flair while André 3000 had multiple influences – from the late Jimmy Hendrix, the psychedelic period, the preppy era and dandyism, he became the loudest pink dresser of the group. Outkast arrived at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards having Big Boi in furry bottoms. But it would be André 3000, who would push pink to new heights. The color would be infused in their Outkast Clothing Co. brand. One year later, it would be Harlem rapper Cam’ron who would be the talk of the town as he showed up wearing a pink mink fur to a Seventh on Sixth Fashion Shows in 2002. From that moment on, he cemented his pink legacy. This presentation will be adapted from a book chapter co-written by me and Dr. Monica Miller for Fresh, Fly Fabulous: 50 Years of Hip Hop Style (Rizzoli).
Diana Sanchez, “‘Suciedad Divina’: Tokischa and Embodied Sucia Performance(s)”
Tokischa is a Dominican dembow superstar and fashion icon; notorious for generating controversy
through her explicit lyrics, provocative performance(s), seductive tone, and uncensored display of
queerness. Tokischa’s sense of style plays and integral role to her life and career, it serves as a site for
creative transgression that remixes the lines of respectable gender expression. In 2022 Tokischa and DJ
Marshmello released a song titled ESTILAZO, a term she uses to characterize her eccentric style. I read
the three-minute music video for ESTILAZO as a vehicle to challenge structures of domination through
titillating imagery, vulgar lyrics, and sexual aesthetic excess (Hernandez 2020). In the video, the
protagonist employs a “style of embodied difference” to embark on a journey of transformation (54).
Furthermore, Tokischa’s stylized performance(s) on-stage, in music videos, on social media, and at award
shows demonstrates her dedication to subverting gendered expectations of respectable femininity. For
example, at the 2023 Premio lo Nuestro award ceremony she appeared embellished in a fragmented
corporate suit, with a full face of makeup, and a bushy mustache to compliment her look. In an interview,
she described that her outfit represented the hybridity of masculinity and femininity within us. This paper
understands Tokischa’s manipulation of fashion as a technology capable of transcending logics of
heteronormativity. My analysis is grounded in Jillian Hernandez’s framework of aesthetics of excess and
Deborah Varga’s analytic of lo sucio, wherein sucias exist disobediently and demonstrate the potentiality
to sustain queer joy and futurity. Using textual analysis, I argue that Tokischa recasts suciedad (Vargas
2014) as a source of divine empowerment and pleasure to playfully provoke authority. How does
Tokischa use fashion to agitate dominant narratives that impose racial and sexual difference onto the
Latina body?
Rosa Stern Pait, “‘Then Expul Me’: A Musical Monologue by Kitara ‘George Santos’ Ravache”
Hey you messy bitches! 1 Did you miss your favorite politician to ever spice up CSPAN? America
is so back 2 , and she’s back too - it’s George Santos, on tour in character as his drag persona
Kitara Ravache to finally tell her story - and this time, it’s the honest truth. The setting - backstage at a
run down club, Anywhere, USA. Disgraced former representative Anthony “George Santos” Devolder
lounges in her dressing gown preparing to confess it all night after night. She has spent the long, dreary
years since her expulsion from Congress begging for attention at the newly ascendant Donald Trump’s
table, scrambling for the scraps of notoriety the public is willing to throw her on Cameo, and loitering
around Hermès trying to get offered a Birkin on name recognition alone. Finally, having racked up too
much credit card debt at Ferragamo, she hit rock bottom and decided to return to her true calling.
She’s weary of the pose she had to assume to represent New York’s wealthy 3rd congressional
district. She didn’t want to grovel at the feet of the Republican party - all she really wanted was
fame. When she was a young queen cruising the beaches of Niterói in a fishnet mask, she
thought she was on her way to stardom. But the allure of money and power drew her from her
path into a web of lies and fugly blazers.
Kitara will walk us through a selec
