The Island of Misfit Fashionistas

Barely one year after it first hit the red carpets at fashion shows and in the Trump Tower section of Fifth Avenue and at the D.C. Women's March, the pussy hat has already gone the way of the poodle skirt. Where it's not gathering dust in the back of a closet, it's being showcased in museums as a quaint little curio of a bygone age.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London managed to snag one as early as last spring. Still, the pussy hat craze continued on to International Woman's Day in May, with a mass knit-a-thon during a session of the Swiss Parliament. No word as to whether Clinton fans who were so outraged by Vanity Fair's recent suggestion that Hillary take up knitting boycotted those kinds of sewing circle events in solidarity with their heroine.

Not to be outdone by Victoria and Albert, the founder of the original Pussyhat Project plans an actual stand-alone museum of pussy hats from all over the world. Hollywood stars like Madonna and Julianne Moore were said to be donating their own castaway hats to the permanent exhibit, to be located on the grounds of Michigan State University.

That the pussy hat craze was relatively short-lived is quite understandable, given that the mass outpourings of anger over Donald Trump's election constituted not so much a social justice protest movement as a coordinated venting of support for the vanquished Hillary Clinton. In fact, the pink pussy hat turned out to be the precursor of the more "woke" and expensive black protest-dress debuting of the Golden Globes.  The Great Pussy Hat Rebellion of 2017 has morphed seamlessly into the #MeToo craze, which itself is a proxy fight against Donald Trump in the persona of Harvey Weinstein and other celebrity predators.

Since there is really not that much cultural distance between the spectacle of Hollywood and the spectacle of Washington, the black dress protest movement still has a little life left in it. It's currently gliding high above dystopian Trump Country to make its soft and silky landing at the upcoming State of the Union extravaganza. In just a few short weeks, Democratic congresswomen will make their own bold prime-time fashion statements in solidarity with their fellow actresses.

The Hill reports:

Female Democrats including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) plan to wear black to show solidarity with victims of sexual misconduct, just as Hollywood stars did at an awards show over the weekend.

Members of the Democratic Women’s Working Group had been discussing ideas for a coordinated effort around the State of the Union after wearing white — the color of suffragettes — to Trump’s first joint address to Congress last year. They settled on wearing black after watching the Golden Globes on Sunday.Female Democrats are hoping that their display of black will help bring the “Me Too” conversation about rooting out sexual misconduct and women’s issues to Trump’s State of the Union on Jan. 30.

After failing to ram through equal pay/living wage legislation during their Obama-era supermajority, the best that the women legislators can now hope for is to "continue the conversation" about how unfair it all is while they show "solidarity" with their fellow millionaire-victims on the Other Coast.

This is not to say that the Democratic men won't also be making their own statements.

Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, for one, delivered a rousing House speech to boldly announce that he will bravely plunk himself down right in the middle of the chamber this year instead of doing what he usually does: arriving early to get in prime position to shake the president's hand in front of the TV cameras. His act of passive resistance is sure to light a fire under his constituents, many of whom are finding it increasingly hard to meet the rent and the heating bills in their gentrifying city neighborhoods.

A few of Engel's colleagues will be even bolder, and not show up at all.

None of them apparently plans to loudly disrupt the somber ceremony or to heckle Donald Trump. Small-d democratic acts of dissent would not be in keeping with the solemn decorum of the occasion at all. If the Democrats acted up they'd be going as low as that racist Republican who screeched out "You Lie!" to Barack Obama at one of his SOTU addresses. And as the Dems always say, they like to go high and stay high in order to distance themselves from the low and the impolitic. It's why they forced Al Franken out of the Senate: to send a tacit message to whatever tiny sliver of the electorate they're still trying to impress.

Meanwhile, the edgy crusading New York Times wants to hear from all the regular disgruntled women out there.

They want to know just one thing: What did you do with your pink pussy hat? Did you relegate it to the island of misfit clothes or toys?  

"Show us where it lives!" they gush. They want all the fluffy details, and they especially want cute photos, such as your adorable pet cat wearing it to keep its own little ears warm during this harsh winter of gossip and discontent.

If you're very lucky, a Times editor might even give you a personal call before the nostalgia phase of the pink hat craze reaches its sell-by date.