Pink Flamingos Essay Price has a negative view of United States culture by the satirical tone throughout her essay, “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History.” Even in the title of the essay, Price demonstrates the ironic life of the “plastic” yet “natural” history of plastic pink flamingos. In her essay, she mocks the history of the evolving plastic pink flamingos and how America tends to be consumed with the latest fad. Price mentions that the flamingos are most known in Florida. However, she states that they were hunted to extinction in the late 1800s. These birds somehow still draw the attention of the working-class tourists to Florida. Tourists then have the desire to obtain these new bright, bold, pink flamingos and spread them out around were they live. Most Americans have to have the newest trends to keep up with everyone else. Therefore, when the flamingos became popular in Florida, other states had to bandwagon with this new popular plastic bird. After all, they did not want to be left out of the latest trend. Soon the famous plastic pink flamingos were appearing everywhere across the country in motels, restaurants, and lounges. Yet, these are plastic pink birds that are meant to be in people’s yards; they are simply tacky yard art. Since people liked the birds and the birds were very popular, our culture focused on obtaining their pink presence in almost everything. The color pink blinded the American culture even more with popularity of the flamingos. People went crazy over the hot pink on the birds and were consumed with the forward-looking affluence it gave in the time period of the end of the Depression. The people wanted the hottest color of the decade, and almost everyone had to have the latest pink accessories or machines that came out. Price uses the example of Elvis Presley buying a pink Cadillac to demonstrate the obsession of pink in our culture in this time period. Since Elvis Presley bought a pink Cadillac, to America culture
