Bisexual lighting is the simultaneous use of pink, purple, and blue
lighting
Lighting or illumination is the deliberate use of light to achieve practical or aesthetic effects. Lighting includes the use of both artificial light sources like lamps and light fixtures, as well as natural illumination by capturing daylig ...
to represent
bisexual
Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, or to more than one gender. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, whi ...
characters. It has been used in
studio lighting for film and television, as has been observed in the
cinematography
Cinematography (from ancient Greek κίνημα, ''kìnema'' "movement" and γράφειν, ''gràphein'' "to write") is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography.
Cinematographers use a lens to focu ...
of various films. Whether the technique exists as a general phenomenon in filmmaking is disputed.
Some commentators have pointed to the pink and blue color scheme as merely a reference to 1980s aesthetic.
It is reminiscent of
neon lights and is also associated with
retrowave.
Symbolism
George Pierpoint of
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...
writes that some social media users claim bisexual lighting has been used as an "empowering visual device" which counteracts perceived under-representation of bisexuality in the visual media. The colors may be a direct reference to the
bisexual pride flag
The bisexual flag is a pride flag representing bisexuality, bisexual individuals and the bisexual community. The magenta stripe represents attraction to the same sex, while the blue stripe represents attraction to the opposite sex. The purpl ...
.
The trend gained traction in the
LGBT community
The LGBT community (also known as the LGBTQ+ community, GLBT community, gay community, or queer community) is a loosely defined grouping of lesbian, gay men, gay, bisexuality, bisexual, transgender, and other queer individuals united by a comm ...
in 2017 particularly on
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
sites
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
,
Reddit
Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...
, and
Pinterest
Pinterest is an American image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information (specifically "ideas") on the internet using images, and on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboard ...
.
Sasha Geffen wrote at
Vulture.com that it had become "solid in its meaning",
while Nicky Idika of ''PopBuzz'' wrote that it has now "become an established part of bisexual storytelling in media".
And while ''
The Daily Dot
''The Daily Dot'' is a digital media company covering the culture of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Founded by Nicholas White in 2011, ''The Daily Dot'' is headquartered in Austin, Texas.
The site, conceived as the Internet's "hometown ...
'' questioned whether "the aesthetic or the cultural significance
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first", it too concluded that the idea "has stuck".
...