This is an article I wrote about the colour Pink for the gender section of our college magazine. It's a little forced, certainly not my favourite written work of all time but it was a tedious task...might as well post it.
PINK FOR A GIRL
A little over a year ago, my aunt and uncle decided to adopt a child – a boy. On their rampage of a shopping spree to fill their home with baby things, from toys, baby care products, diapers, bedding, to the most important – clothes, they went all out! But it was no mean task. While they wanted their purchases to encompass every colour imaginable, they found little other than blue (for a boy) and pink (for a girl). They bought both. So, it’s not uncommon for my baby brother to be mistaken for a girl every now and again, especially when he’s dressed all in pink.
In a society built upon norms and stereotypes, (and let’s face it, which society isn’t?) feminine associations with the colour pink are as unavoidable as death and taxes, perhaps more. So I decided to probe a little deeper into the issue.
The irony is that up until the 1940’s, the colour pink, because of it’s closeness to red, which is decidedly a masculine colour, was assigned to boys, whereas the colour blue was linked to girls for being delicate and dainty. Now, I’m not certain as to how exactly the reversal in connotations came about but, I’m going to go ahead and take a wild guess. I believe that we can safely give the entire credit to Barbie, for ensuring that no female can possibly escape from the colour of her gender.
The colour pink is just so strongly associated with feminism that all the “girlie” girls can’t get enough of it. Just like Paris Hilton, they can surround every inch of their vicinity with pink kittens, dolls, teddy bears, bows, hearts, ribbons and flowers and never get bored. Whereas, the “not-so-girlie” girls, well, I think ‘aversive reaction’ is the right term here. Some simply cannot handle the idea of pink, and its nature of bringing to mind images of overflowing treacle and sickeningly sweet peppermint.
Due to the feminine link, the pink ribbon is the symbol for breast cancer and Victoria’s Secret Lingerie, very appropriately, has an entire clothing line for women, simply called PINK.
However, it should be noted that feminism is not restricted to the female gender alone. I recently asked a friend of mine if he would ever wear the colour pink and I received a short, curt reply: “No, its gay”. I soon realized that he isn’t completely wrong in his assumption, for officially, pink is the mascot colour for the LGBT community in many countries, from Pink Money – Gay purchasing power, to Pink Pistols – Gay gun rights.
When Barack Obama had just become the president of the United States, people wondered if the nation’s first black president would be alright with living in The White House. However, I doubt Argentina’s female president Christina Fernandez might’ve had any problems with her place of residence seeing as she now lives in The Pink House.
Stereotypes about the colour pink are ubiquitously present in every sect of modern society. Even the assumption that, as a woman, Christina Fernandez likes the colour of her new home is stereotypical.
However, even the most far-fetched stereotypes have their basis in truth and logical reasoning. Experiments conducted in order to decipher the effects of colours on human behaviour have shown that, while surrounding oneself with the colour red tends to make one aggressive and antagonistic, the colour pink actually suppresses anger and anxiety ridden behaviour. It invokes feelings of tranquility, to the extent of actually causing physical weakness. This may be why the weakest of the fingers on our hand is referred to as the pinkie finger and the colour is generally associated with the so called “weaker sex”. Originating perhaps from the same notion of the colour, low paying jobs meant mainly for women, such as waitressing, hair dressing and the like, are commonly referred to as ‘Pink collared jobs’.
However the female sex fights back, ironically using the very colour that supposedly epitomizes its weakness. Nisha Susan’s ‘Pink Chaddi Campaign’ may not have been as dramatic as Pramod Muthalik waking up to find his horse’s head in his bed in the morning, but the campaign caused a nation-wide stir nonetheless.
I still remember a time when Shah Rukh Khan, with his black, shining dandruff-free hair, would flirtingly stare at us from our TV screens, squint his eyes just a little bit, and ask us if we dared to wear black. Today, with metro sexuality being such a household term, it would be quite a sight to see all the women turn to the men and ask them, if they would dare to wear pink. Personally, I can think of nothing looking sexier on a man than a crisp, well-fitted pink shirt, but, hey, that’s just me. I like pink.
And I am not alone. George Costanza (a character from the TV series “Seinfeld”) simply refused to date a woman whose cheeks were void of a pinkish hue. Steven Tyler (from Aerosmith) liked the colour so much that he wrote an entire song about it that went on to win a Grammy award. But, I doubt anyone’s obsession quite compares to that of singer/songwriter Alicia Moore, who most people know as just ‘Pink’.
So, in conclusion, what is it that I have found out from my excavation into the mysteries of the colour pink? One: the stereotypes exist and there’s really nothing I can do about it. Two: Some hate it, some like it and some love it, and there’s really nothing I would want to do about it. And lastly: I realized that maybe we need to redefine the word ‘gender’ from being dependent upon one’s actual biological anatomy to being determined by one’s conditioning and associations. Then, perhaps, Blue is for Boys and Pink is, in fact, for girls.
