Pink!

[elettaria]

I'm curious to know what people think about pink and its cultural associations with femininity and girliness. Apologies for the crappy options with regard to gender. I did consider cis-female, cis-male, transwoman, transman, brought up female but don't identify as one gender, ditto male, and other, though I worried that I'd still be getting it

Comments

[finnygan]

I am horribly ignorant, but ... what does "cisgendered" mean?

[elettaria]

Oops, I knew I'd forgotten something. Post about to be edited accordingly.

[altglas]

I like pink for the shallow reason that bright pink suits me. I find pink cheerful. I hated it when I was little out of spite, just because that's what you'd get as the girly colour.

[elettaria]

Hardly shallow! You could equally say that it's shallow still to be saying, "Waah, I'm not going to like pink because I was told to like it," when you're in your thirties! I've just about managed to train myself to like it on other people, and I do have one top which has elements of very pale pink in it, but I still get the visceral reaction of strong dislike very often, and I don't think I could wear a definite pink or decorate my living space with it (apart from using a bit in a quilt. Possibly). I did get over-exposed to an awful lot of very strong pink as a child, though.

It's also more complex for me because of pink being the queer colour (either in general or for men and with lavender for women). Again it's not simple, it's about reclaiming what was once (and still is) an insult, though as it's primarily about men being accused of being effeminate, it doesn't get as immediate a response from me.

I present, without comment, a website devoted to pink laptops. Though I will mention in passing that when there was some

[elettaria]

Does anyone ever buy pink clothing and then dye it another colour, or is that too much hassle/expensive/likely to murder your washing machine?

[ephemera]

when I was six or so, I adored pink. I had a pink bedroom, and wore a lot of pink. This is unfortunate as I was a chubby ginger-haired kid, and I *clash* with pink. And my mum hated pink-as-a-girl-colour, but put up with it because I adored it so. (although I did go for the more intense end of the palet, rather than the pastel version a lot of the time.)

As a teenager I *hated* pink with a firy burning passion, mostly for the gender propoganda issues, but as an adult I've mellowed some, back towards a 'it doesn't suit me, but it's just a colour, not a toxic plague'.

The difficulty factor in buying baby/toddler clothes that aren't blue-with-trucks-and-monsters for a boy or pink-with-cute-or-princesses for girls is starting to get to me, though! (I have a nephew and two god-kids between 6months and 18 months)

[littlemissalien]

See, my Mum never put me in that much pink as a child because she's a redhead and thusly clashed with pink, so she kind of projected that (and a hatred of green because her mother always dressed her in green) onto me

[eye_of_a_cat]

I truly hated it when I was younger, because of the whole Pink Is For Girls thing (which seems to be even worse now - I remember there being a lot of pink around, but I'm fairly sure not every toy out there was pink and/or relating to princesses!). I don't loathe it so much now, but it does annoy me that, e.g., my walking boots have pink on them. Because that's how you tell they're for women, presumably? Sigh.