Rainbow Flag

The rainbow flag was created by American artist Gilbert Baker in 1978 for San Francisco’s pride celebrations, originally with eight stripes. Practical production constraints — some fabric colors were hard to source at scale — soon reduced it to today’s standard six: red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, blue for serenity, purple for spirit.

Later variants layered on new meanings: the 2017 “Philadelphia” version added black and brown stripes for communities of color; in 2018 designer Daniel Quasar’s Progress Pride Flag added a chevron incorporating the pink, blue, and white of the transgender flag alongside black and brown — the arrow shape signaling “still moving forward.” Trans, bisexual, asexual, and other communities also fly flags of their own, often alongside the rainbow.

Register note: a neutral, globally recognized symbol — but how safe it is to display varies enormously by setting. In Chinese-speaking contexts, rainbow imagery on a phone case or pin often functions as a quiet mutual-recognition signal; judge your own environment (see safety notes).

Common misreadings: assuming the six colors map to six orientations — they stand for values, not identity categories; and drawing the flag with seven rainbow colors — the standard version has six, which is actually the easiest way to spot it.