“Gender revealing” is what my best friend and I call the day we wear our big hoodies to school; mine is pink and hers is blue. We never plan it ahead of time. It’s all about coincidentally showing up matching to school. In fact, this is how we themed our birthday party this year. Blue and pink streamers hung from the ceilings, and there were so many pastel heart-shaped balloons that we could barely walk without tripping. The birthday party turned out to be one of my favorite ones yet, because I got to hang out with my friends: the people who loved, cared and supported me throughout my time in middle school. The beginning of middle school was rough, but I was glad I had finally found my people.
My favorite colors when I was a little girl were pink, purple and gold. Emphasis on the pink. Looking back now, I understand why I had three favorite colors and not just one; my room and closet were filled with pink objects, and it became a color hard to not get sick of. According to my parents, I also wore dresses any chance I could get outside of the house, including the princess gowns I used for playing dress up. This is why I believe hanging out with little kids is the best. Not only do their bright, innocent little faces light up any room, but they literally don’t have a care in the world about how other people think of them. At least for me, wearing a princess dress outside of the house didn’t come at the cost of being embarrassed, because I just didn’t care. If I wanted to wear the princess dress, I was going to wear the princess dress. It’s not until around 4 years old when children actually begin to understand social dynamics and social approval, the ways their social group is perceived by society.
In the society we live in now, from the moment we’re born, we are assigned colors based on our gender. For many girls, such as me, that color was pink. Soft, delicate and unmistakably feminine. Yet somewhere along the way, that color turns into a mark of shame. For me, that was when I was eight years old. I wanted to be someone who was good at sports, rather than someone that always dressed up in soft, spring colors, whose clothes were considered too dainty to participate in PE (except the fact was, I absolutely hated PE). My new favorite color was orange. Green was ugly, everyone else liked blue, yellow was too neon for my liking, red was angry and purple was too close to pink. Did I ever truly like the color orange? Maybe. But maybe because I was forcing myself too, maybe because I saw that liking pink was considered to be bad. Pink to me, representing all the things I didn’t want society to see me as – weak, unintelligent and too girly.
From media, to classroom dynamics, to conversations during recess on the playground, I grew up receiving both subtle and not so subtle messages on how femininity is less valuable than masculinity. While pink has long been a color associated with girlhood, I felt as a third grader that liking pink had become a stereotype. Girls who embrace it are often seen as shallow, dramatic, or weak, and being the people pleaser I am, I was constantly thinking about how other people saw me, whether it was my teachers, my friends or even the parents of my friends. Even writing this essay feels a bit dramatic and pointless. Like, how can a single color dictate how I view and internalize the misogyny in our society today? I even question my own beliefs. Am I dramatic? Am I over the top? Am I too much?
As girls internalize these messages, we start to distance ourselves from anything that seems too feminine. I learned to roll my eyes at pink, and to brag about not liking it, as if that made me better, or stronger. What we’re really doing is internalizing the idea that femininity is something to be ashamed of, and that to earn respect, we must act more like boys. Or at least, less like the girls society mocks. That’s internalized misogyny: the subconscious belief that the things associated with women and girls are inferior.
The truth is, there is nothing weak about the color pink, or about femininity. Colors, quite literally, have no moral value. Liking pink doesn’t make someone less intelligent, or less capable. We should be respected because we take pride in our femininity, not because we choose to reject it. Reclaiming pink is about reclaiming the freedom to be ourselves, whatever that looks like. The shame around pink isn’t about the color itself, it’s about what society tells us the color represents. We can choose to embrace pink, femininity and all the things we are told make us “too much.” Because the truth is; we were never too much. The world just wasn’t ready for all that we are.
