English

Noun

pinkwashing ‎(uncountable)

1. The practice of a company using support of breast cancer-related charities to promote itself and its products or services.
   • 2011, Our Bodies, Ourselves, Touchstone (2011), ISBN 9781439196656, unnumbered page:

     One such pinkwashing campaign was KFC's "Buckets for the Cure," an attempt by the fried chicken franchise to raise breast cancer awareness in partnership with Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

2. (LGBT) The practice of presenting something, particularly a state, as gay-friendly in order to soften or downplay aspects of its reputation considered negative.
   • 2012, Tim Murphy, "A Gay Community Center's Middle-East Problem", New York Magazine, 6 March 2012:

     Several protesters, many of whom said they were Jewish, invoked what they called pinkwashing, Israel's alleged touting of its progressive stance on gay rights as a way of deflecting global attention away from its treatment of Palestinians.

3. The practice of making a toy pink to signal that the manufacturer expects girls to play with it.
   • 2014, Elizabeth Sweet, "How Did Toys Get Stereotyped by Sex?", The New York Times, 22 December 2014:

     Today, the pink-washed versions of toys that had been marketed solely to boys for decades are touted as a shift toward gender-neutrality.

Quotations

• For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:pinkwashing.

Verb

pinkwashing

1. present participle of pinkwash