On Wednesday morning, after the news of Donald Trump’s election victory broke, Libby Louwagie, 37, was in a state of shock as she dropped her daughter off at pre-school. As she took her daughter to her classroom, she felt conflicted. “I was walking through the hallways with my sunglasses on, wanting to engage with anybody and feeling a lot of anger,” Louwagie tells Rolling Stone. “I started to look around and be like, ‘Who’s happy right now? Who’s sad right now? Who can I cry with?’ I didn’t want to go about life as normal, I wanted to breathe for a minute with the right people.”
Unable to find immediate relief, Louwagie, a self-proclaimed Swiftie who lives in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota, retreated to her car where she made a 22-second TikTok calling her demographic out. “Fellow white women, how are we signaling to each other now which side we are on?” she said, visibly tired and physically drained after crying most of the morning. “I just did school drop off and I don’t trust any of these bitches anymore. Are we gonna [do] like blue friendship bracelets, are we keeping that up?” Louwagie posed semi-jokingly, referencing the friendship bracelets Taylor Swift fans created in preparation for her Eras Tour to create distance and distinction from the 53 percent of white women who voted for Trump.
In the days since, TikTok discourse took off around blue bracelets, and Etsy shops have exploded with merchandise, many to the sound of Paris Paloma’s viral song “Labour”— a feminist chant that speaks to the ways women have been expected to show up in a patriarchal society as “24/7 baby machines.” Now, white women are scrambling to purchase blue beads, charms, and ribbons, to signify their anti-Trump sentiments into wearable merch — a MAGA hat, essentially, but in reverse. Meanwhile, many Black women feel that the call to “craft” in the midst of political and personal uncertainty is unnecessary and performative at best.
“It’s a simple way of identifying when you are walking through the grocery store or through Wal-Mart,” says Lauren Brockman, 35, from Charleston South Carolina. Brockman is one of the women with a TikTok Etsy shop, where she is selling blue bracelets. She says she has received well over 400 orders already. The election was personal for Brockman and her husband, who are looking to start a family and have been considering various fertility options. Although the city of Charleston is “blue”, the state of South Carolina was amongst the red states that contributed to Trump’s win. “If I were to see somebody wearing [a blue bracelet] I would feel more comfortable and a little less alone.”
Louwagie’s video received over 4.4 million views and 500,000 likes. She maintains that it wasn’t necessarily for activist purposes, but just self expression paired with a joke that played off of her love for Taylor Swift — who endorsed Kamala Harris in September — whose Eras Tour called back to the nostalgic times of friendship bracelets amongst her fan base.
“I made a video that exploded, because I think the emotion resonated with a lot of people but it wasn’t anything where I was starting a movement,” she says. “I wasn’t trying to direct anything. My perspective was just a frustrated joke and it quickly turned into something that already feels so much bigger than me.”
What began as a symbol of solidarity is now being repurposed towards a movement. Over 500 miles south of Louwagie, in St. Louis, Missouri, is author and CEO of Black Girl Powerhouse, Brenda Hampton.
Hampton, 57, found out the results of the election when her husband got home from his overnight shift. “It hit really hard,” she says, weeping. To avoid the news, she began scrolling through TikTok. “I saw Libby’s post and when I listened to her, I just felt that it was wrong to say ‘screw you’ to that percentage of white women who actually voted with us,” says Hampton. “When I saw her post and then the blue bracelet movement, I felt for these women, because some of the comments were basically like ‘Go to hell.’” Since then, she’s been crafting and selling bracelets she calls “Unitied,” a play off the word “united.”
The blue bracelets, in general, have mixed reviews. On one hand, people like Hampton and Brockman, who live in states where the majority of residents voted for Trump, don’t necessarily feel their ideology is safe to flourish freely, which limits the people of like-mind with whom they can talk to and organize. Yet on the other hand, many Black women find the bracelets insulting, with notes of condescension.
“It felt like people were trivializing what just happened to say ‘Let’s wear friendship bracelets’,” says Tamara A. Marbury, a Brooklyn-based TikToker who spoke out about it. “You wear your blue bracelet and then what? What happens next? Nothing. Wearing a blue friendship bracelet is not moving the needle. It’s not changing the numbers. It’s a very selfish act that has no significant impact on anything, it’s for the person who’s wearing it to say ‘It wasn’t me’.”
As a Black woman, Marbury’s concerns are justifiable. Out of all demographics, Black women had the highest percentage of votes for Kamala Harris at 89 percent. “The blue bracelets to me aren’t about all women feeling safe,” says Frances Ivy-Marie, the TikToker behind the Black maternal health account @sheshavingababy, who was also among the Black women to speak out against the trend. “The blue bracelets to me are about white women being able to identify other white women who they are willing to be around based on a belief system. It’s hard to participate or get excited about a trend or movement when your safety has been ignored for so long and when your opinion is rarely considered unless they want your stamp of approval, so when they get critiqued they can say, well Black women said this was a good idea.”
While Hampton feels the blue bracelets are well intended, she also had constructive feedback regarding the idea of bracelets equating to white women being “safe spaces.” “The messaging to me was a little muddled,” says Hampton. “When it was mentioned the bracelets were to let you know that you were safe, I was just like ‘Hm, maybe not that,’ maybe we can do something where all women can wear those bracelets, so when we see each other, we can show unity.”
As a result, Hampton and Louwagie have partnered up, to not only promote Black Girl Powerhouse, but to also host a national Zoom call on Nov. 17 at 6pm CST, a virtual meet-and-greet where they are inviting people to come have a conversation and begin to organize. “I want to give everybody a chance to just get it out,” says Hampton. “I don’t know if they’re going to be ready for it or not, but I really want to express what I’m feeling. ”
In addition to the bracelets, creators like Kalilah Wright are getting involved by way of shirts. Similarly to Hampton, Wright, who lives in Baltimore, learned of the election news by way of her boyfriend’s apologetic embrace at 3 a.m. that Wednesday, but she wouldn’t process it until later on in the week. “The next day it felt even more like a gut punch,” says Wright, 40.
Wright learned of the blue bracelets from her white girlfriends, who saw the trend on TikTok. “It wasn’t just because I have a brand, but because they also understood my position,” Wright explains. “They saw how much I advocated for Kamala and they were like, ‘Are you making blue bracelets? Because if you are, I want to support you and buy from you.’”
When Wright began to look into the trend, she had mixed feelings. On one hand, it was white women’s responsibility to have the tough conversations with those within their community as opposed to just looking for safety that isn’t readily available for Black women. On the other, it wasn’t just white women who voted Trump into office. For Wright, the blue bracelets didn’t exactly appeal to her but she felt her business, “Mess In A Bottle” — a T-shirt company of customized messages that are placed in recyclable bottles for packaging — could make an impact. In replacement for the bracelets, Wright created shirts like a black crewneck which says, “Part of the 92%” to represent the exit poll percentage of Black women who voted for Kamala, according to the Washington Post. Other shirts are blue with white lettering that says “I’m one of the ones that voted on the right side of history, even if they got it wrong.”
“The whole premise of my company is to give a voice to the voiceless or to people who don’t know what to say,” says Wright. “I wanted people to feel empowered. It’s for me to wear, it’s for the Black men who did the right thing, it’s for my white homegirl to wear, it’s for the Latino population that did the right thing.”
When I ask Hampton if she’s taking on too much work as a Black woman, she maintains positivity. “I believe that Trump is going to destroy this country and when that time happens, those women are going to be the ones looking for a safe space, and when they do, we’re going to be right here,” she says. Although the city of St. Louis voted for Harris in the majority, the state of Missouri largely voted for Trump. “I’m going to be able to have those conversations with women in the neighborhood on why this was the wrong move to make.”
But women like Marbury are tired. “I’m not searching for safe spaces amongst strangers,” she says. “I’m not searching the crowd for blue bracelets when I’m walking into the grocery store or getting on the train. I know who my allies are because the people I have relationships with, and who I’m in community with, have shown that they are safe spaces.” For this election Marbury, a Black woman, did her part by volunteering where she could and giving time to places like call centers, informing voters on how to cast their ballots.
“Maybe I’m being too optimistic,” admits Hampton. “This is not the moment and time to push people away. This election or this blue bracelet movement is just another journey. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But you just can’t give up. You can’t throw your hands up in the air and say ‘Fuck it.’”