For as long as I can remember, my first bike was bright pink, with a matching helmet, elbow, and knee guard. My first suitcase was pink, and my room in the house that I grew up in had pink walls. Everything that I owned as a child, was primarily pink; not because the colour was forced on to me in any way, but something as trivial as a colour preference seemed intrinsic to identifying myself as a girl.
As I grew up, however, it somehow felt necessary to be disinterested in traits that associated me with anything that was considered traditionally effeminate. That meant ditching makeup, fancy dresses, jewellery, boy bands, and of course, anything that was pink. Because it is, after all, a “girl’s” colour. Perhaps it was an attempt to rebel against society in general, that wanted a woman to look and behave in a certain manner. It was an attempt to not be like the “other girls”, and other forms of media selling it as a compliment and only reaffirming the notion. What I realized a few years later, however, was that the very term was in fact, extremely derogatory. As it inherently implied that associating with the feminine was inherently bad but because there was something different, it was good and acceptable. Which implied adopting femininity itself being something to be ashamed of, and to be different, one had to take up traditionally more masculine habits, such as being into sports, video games, and junk food.
In the attempt to be different, it led to the loss of the individuality that was so sought after, only to join the “I’m not like the other girls” club. It is important to recognise that gender norms are something that’s imposed by society, and the sooner we understand that the better. It is therefore refreshing to see our understanding of genders evolving; and as we step out of the heteronormative, we can no longer be bound to certain correlations between gender identities and traits. It is irrational to set up sports and video games as “masculine”, and makeup and emotions as “feminine”. Even something trivial as a colour choice. For colours influence, clothing options, and choice of clothing is intrinsic to our self-expression as being.