A Study in Pink

(s)

So we have the idea that pink is girl, blue is boy. I for one have been subject to it. Girls' bathroom at school is pink. Girls' section of stores are pink. Girls' logos for dolls are pink. Barbie is all about pink. I really can't say much about boys since growing up, I never paid much attention to that side, not growing  up as a boy. So I'll start with a childhood story about pink. 

When I was little I was given a toy bunnyrabbit. We don't remember who gave it to me, but I like to think it was my late grandmother, Grandma Fran, one of the nicest people ever. I remember getting my toy bunny, in a plastic bag, I was expecting a puzzle or something. But nope. A plushy soft bunnyrabbit with a little silver bow on its floppy ear. So cute. I loved that bunny and I named her Sweetness. I still have Sweetness to this day, although her bow is beige, her soft fur is rough and her whiskers are bent and misshapen. And I like to give my toys away to charity, I did that with some Barbies. But not Sweetness. I cannot part with that sweet bunnyrabbit. I'm getting teary thinking about my rabbit.

Anyway, the thing about this bunny was..she was blue. DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUN. I later wrote stories (I was six so not novels or anything) about Bella the blue bunny, Sweetness was my inspiration. But anyway, Sweetness is blue. I didn't really care, she could have been any colour. But she was blue and I thought that was a pretty funky colour for a bunny and I thought of myself as a funky kid so we were an absolute match.

And like all kids with toys, Sweetness came everywhere with me. To church even. My mother sang in the choir and I was brought along to learn about religion and meet friends. And older boy, I think we was a Sunday school volunteer said he liked my bunny. Of course he did, who didn't love my bunny? But he called the bunny a boy. I corrected him. Sweetness is a girl. But he was so sure the bunny was a boy. I protested again and asked why he thought of this and he said it was because my bunny was blue and blue is a boy colour. I was offended. My bunny, my love and joy who I knew was a girl was subject to gender norms. I was heartbroken. What did he know about my bunny? I think he was joking to get a reaction out of me, not to say he's a terrible person, but I didn't think it was funny and took it too seriously. And then I began to question gender colours. At a young age. Yap. It became obvious. Barbie is all about pink. There are little toy cars that kids can ride in. For boys. The ones for girls are pink and white.

To this day, I see this. Pink is a feminine colour. To the point a boy in a high school was teased for wearing pink. Yes, a boy bullied for a clothing choice. Luckily the next day, a more popular boy wore pink in his defence and rallied others to do so as well. Now schools in my area have a day when everyone wears pink to prove a point that real men wear pink. And pink does not make a man less of one. There is now pink shirt day, five years after the incident, people still wear pink to stand up to bullying.

Now for some random pink facts. (This is after all a study in pink, not a proper formal essay.) I was watching QI, a British game show about..facts and randomness. I don't understand it. But one episode was about girls and boys and it was mentioned that until the 1920s, boys wore pink, girls wore blue. That blew my mind. The show seemed somewhat silly and being a skeptic, I didn't really think it was true or not.  But the next day at school, a professor of gender studies had a pink fact sheet on her office door. With the same information as the show.

Red is a manly colour. Pink is a light red. So pink is a boy colour that will one day darken to red. The Virgin Mary wears blue. Blue is feminine. But why is blue feminine and the Virgin Mary's colour? Well. Back in the day, like waaaaaaaaaaaay back, blue paint was expensive. Really expensive and hard to come by. So you wouldn't use blue paint for anything. If you had blue paint, it would go to something lovely and special. Something that deserves such a lovely colour. Someone like the Virgin Mary. Sweet and calm and young and pure and the mother of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary is pretty important, especially when everyone was pretty much Catholic at that time. So that's how blue because the Virgin Mary's colour.

Now I live in Canada, which is America's little brother. A polite America, really. Where pink is a girl's colour, blue is a boy's. It is rare to see a man wearing pink around here. They are subject to teasing and although schools try to make pink trivial, people still get made fun of. But did you know, other cultures value pink? Take Spain for example. A matador (a guy that teases bulls with the red cape for people's entertainment) is viewed as pretty manly. I mean taking on a bull. But they typically wear pink. In that culture, pink isn't a girl's colour. Not at all.

But in this day and age, blue is for boys, pink is for girls. It is still enforced on people, at least in the Western world. To the point I was raised hating pink. Because I never wanted to be a girly girl. I liked sports and wrestling and playing with toy cars. I was a tomboy as a child and I would not be typecasted by wearing a colour. Ironically, I'm wearing pink as I write this. But hopefully we will reach a time when pink and blue are valued like yellow or green. Both yellow and green are gender-neutral, aren't they? I can wear green or yellow, a man can as well and no one would think twice about it. So maybe one day pink and blue will be just as they are- as colours without anything attached.