pinkwash

pink +‎ -wash.

pinkwash (third-person singular simple present pinkwashes, present participle pinkwashing, simple past and past participle pinkwashed)

1. To cover in a coat of pink paint.
   • 1986 December 29, Susan Lardner, “Lotus Blossum”, in The New Yorker:

     […] I see, twenty yards away, workmen pinkwashing the newly laid, badly stained, cheap-looking brick cladding of a newly built apartment house called — well, something ridiculous: Nepal, let's say.

2. To promote consumer goods and services using support of breast cancer-related charities.
   • 2008, Penelope Williams, Breast Cancer: Biography of an Illness, BPS Books, published 2008, →ISBN, page 162:

     They see such corporate involvement as exploitation, making profits on the backs of ill women. […] They claim these campaigns trivialize the disease, "pinkwashing" its real nature.

   • 2012 February 15, Karen McVeigh, “Susan G Komen's 'pinkwashing' problem a black mark on charity”, in The Guardian‎:

     Gayle Sulik, sociologist and author of "Pink Ribbon Blues", said pinkwashing is only the beginning of how "breast cancer culture" undermines women's health.

3. (LGBT) To tout the gay-friendliness of something in an attempt to downplay or soften aspects of it considered negative.
   • 2011 November 22, Sarah Schulman, “Israel and ‘Pinkwashing’”, in New York Times‎:

     Pinkwashing not only manipulates the hard-won gains of Israel’s gay community, but it also ignores the existence of Palestinian gay-rights organizations.

   • 2012, "Seattle LGBT commission cancels meeting with Israeli gays over treatment of Palestinians", The Times of Israel, 21 March 2012 (article tagline):

     Critics say Israel is 'pinkwashing' its practices vis-a-vis the Palestinians by emphasizing its good record on gay rights.

• For more quotations using this term, see Citations:pinkwash.

• purplewashing