The safety pin, a small pin that is used to hold together and fasten fabric. This is literally all a safety pin was designed to do, so why has it always been some sort of fashion statement? It started out in the 1970’s when the music genre Punk Rock emerged on the scene. In the United Kingdom, many punk rockers looked up to the rock artist Richard Hell. Richard was one of the first rockers to incorporate torn clothing and safety pins to his wardrobe. This statement grew popular amongst musicians and caught the eyes of the band the Sex Pistols. Since the Sex Pistols first debut, they had images of safety pins and wore many safety pins on their clothing, a kind of torn up and tattered ‘I don’t care’ look. Punk rockers being outrageous with a wild sense of fashion started to not only use safety pins as a means of holding your clothes together, they used them to secure patches on their jackets, vests, and pants. The implementation of the safety pin grew into not only a decoration for your clothing, but rockers from all over would use safety pins to pierce their faces and/or ears with and use these as a part of their new-found fad. Ever since then, safety pins have been associated with the punk rock genre/fashion.

As of lately, the safety pin has been making a huge come back in the political world. Since the election of Trump as the president of the United States, members of the L.G.B.T community have been wearing safety pins as a sort of protest against his hate speech. Not only does the L.G.B.T community feel attacked by Trump, but the minorities and women of America do as well as any one that stands up to hate. Those who are opposed to Trump have been decorating their clothing with safety pins as a way of saying ‘we are linked through these pins and we will stand up for the vulnerable as one’. A way of communicating to others that they are an ally and they are there for anyone that needs to reach out.