Excuse me for a moment while I wander out of my usual area of commentary and clamber up on my soapbox for a moment.
So there’s an article on the BBC Magazine page today about pink. Not the singer; not the song; not the magazine - the colour and how dangerous it is for little girls.
Yeah - hang on, it’s coming…
The article starts out by observing that in the early 1900s, blue was the colour for girls and pink was for boys. Blue was seen as a weaker and daintier colour, whereas pink was “stronger” because it was akin to red. Nowadays it’s the other way round, obviously, and according to commentator Sue Palmer, this is cause for concern.
“You can't find girls over the age of three who aren't obsessed with the colour. It's under their skin from a very early age and severely limits choices, and decisions.”
The article also observes that no one knows exactly when pink became “the colour of girls”, but it notes that when Adolph Hitler sent homosexuals to concentration camps to be “cured”, he marked them with pink triangles - which “suggests that by then, pink was associated with femininity.”
And. Here. We. Go…
Right, first of all, the fact that Hitler marked “curable” homosexuals with pink triangles suggests jack about squat apart from the fact that he was an absolute nutter butter. It has nothing to do with girls, boys, pink, blue, the price of tea in China or anything else for that matter.
I HATE this kind of reporting. Its like those articles when they talk about the rising numbers of heroin addicts in this country and then mention that Al Qaeda used the profits from the heroin trade to fund the 9/11 attacks Yes, but entirely irrelevant within the context of your article and inflammatory (as if heroin addicts don’t have enough problems - now they’ve got that on their conscience as well!!). Same here - going from girls and boys to colours to Nazis is sensationalism, not a logical progression of thought - have you considered journalism school/ therapy?
Second - what the hell was this doing on the front page of the BBC’s news site - could we not have found something else vaguely important in the world to fill the gap?
Thirdly, the content. So here’s the thing - why is it important if little girls like pink? As one mother of two points out later in the article:
“My girls love pink - it's their favourite colour, but equally they are happy in the garden wallowing in mud. Surely this is all just about balanced and sensible parenting?”
Thank you - oh voice of reason!! Little girls like pink - so what?? Yes - marketers target little girls by painting stuff pink. Yes - it’s a stereotype. Yes - it’s a bit repetitive for parents. But, we’re talking about four year old girls - they don’t give a fuck. Four year old girls do not give a rat’s ass about being specifically targeted by marketers - they just want the stuff these guys are selling.
The dissenting opinion in the article points out that its no surprise that marketers have latched on to a bright colour as a way of targeting girls. Girls are much more aware of colour than boys, both the colours themselves and their names. But it could have been any colour. I’d like to point out that the dissenting opinion comes from an American man. This is what happens when British women get press attention for spouting this kind of drivel. Sue Palmer, you are marginalising the rest of us who actually have a valuable contribution to make!
I’m with the mother of two and other guy on this one - I don’t see what the big deal is. I really like pink as a colour, and always have done. I don’t think it’s been particularly influential on the course of my life, or harmed me or anything else. It just looks cute on me. I’ve also always really liked black and red* - so what?
*That being said - I did grow up to be first a goth and then a sex blogger - so there may be something to this colours thing after all...
Image via Gummy Lump