What is the purpose of explaining about pink flamingo? Is it really important that Americans once were captivated by pink flamingos? Price, the author of the passage, is talking about the ‘pink flamingo boom’ in America. The main points of the essay are the facts that caused the boom. Price says that the boldness of the phenomenon is that the object was flamingo, and that the color was pink. The facts themselves do not sound to be major. They are just facts, and make it hard to get the opinion of the author. However, giving the facts is not the ultimate goal of the passage. Price is actually criticizing Americans by explaining the event that actually happened in the past.
Price is blaming Americans for their short-sighted and duplicitous aspect by showing the different attitude toward the pink flamingoes. In the first paragraph, the author shows the attitude of Americans toward the pink flamingoes during the ‘pink flamingo boom’. All the people loved pink flamingo so they bought many flamingo souvenirs. After that, she explains the attitude during the 1800s in the second paragraph. Americans in 1800s hunted the flamingo in order to get foods and the feathers. Price is showing how stupid the Americans were by contrasting the two different behaviors. How strange it is to get rid of every flamingo in the world and then long for the flamingoes so much to produce plastic models of flamingoes? These ironic behaviors clearly show how the Americans were short-sighted and duplicitous.
Additionally, Price criticizes the appearance oriented form of American society. The third paragraph is about the second boldness of the flamingo boom, the color of the flamingo. Price claims that the flamingo was able to bring the boom because the flamingo was pink. She explains the social tendency to prefer the color pink at the time, by showing some examples that shows the Americans’ preference to pink. She mentioned that pink was the ‘hottest color’ during the decade. At that time, all the Americans liked pink and used the color on many things. However, this clearly proves that the American society was appearance oriented. Only the fact that the flamingo was pink became the reason of the fame of flamingo in America. The Americans simply followed the trend, not considering other facts but the appearance of flamingo. Price only gave a so simple and the only reason – the color – to explain the flamingo boom, making Americans seem to be blamable.
The essay does not include any of the author’s own view about the flamingo boom literally, but she actually is expressing her own idea about the American culture. She is blaming Americans for their ironic and stupid behaviors in several ways. It is clear that the Americans in 1950s did something not reasonable, so the author achieved the goal on writing it.
