Feminist Icon Pink Is Raising Her Children Without Gender Labels

Pink and her daughter Willow, 6. Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer December 6, 2017

The celebrated singer-songwriter Pink may be named after a traditionally feminine color, but she won’t be raising her children with gender labels.

In an interview about her success and raising children in the Trump era, the performer explained that she and racer Cary Hart run a “very label-less household”. The couple believes in sending their children, Willow and Jameson, to schools with gender neutral bathrooms and encourages her daughter who has mentioned that she may want to marry a woman.

But even the offspring of our wokest celebrities aren’t immune to sexist socialization. Last summer at the VMAs, Pink revealed that her older child, six year-old Willow, told her one day, “Mama, I am the ugliest girl I know.” Pink responded by creating a slideshow of performers including Freddie Mercury, Prince, and Annie Lennox, who she says “lived their truth” without regard for convention. Pink told her daughter that she doesn’t change her looks so other people will accept her.

Instead, she said, “We help other people to change so that they can see more kinds of beauty.”

Jenny Singer is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a student in the MFA Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, a former staff writer at Glamour, and a former writer and editor at the Forward.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO