There are people in the world who suffer through hunger, poverty, war and disease. So I wouldn’t blame you if you initially found this article a little ridiculous for dedicating an apology to a color: the color pink. But I hope that the point I attempt to expose will be able to form at least a small part of the dialogue on gender, symbolism, and the power we give over non-human aspects of our lives. So, without further adieu, my apology:
Dear Color Pink,
I believe the human race owes you an apology. I’ll start with myself.
I’m sorry for the way I treated you pink. I’m sorry that by age ten, I decided you were “too girly” and demeaning to be taken seriously. Without knowing or understanding you, I judged you as unfit. I believed that girls who had you on dresses and backpacks were frilly and shallow. While I know I am not the only one who thought this way, and have come a long way since my limited, pre-pubescent understanding of the world, I know I ( and a good chunk of the world’s population) will need some time to understand just how limited our attitudes towards colors can be.
Poor, misunderstood pink. You are a color. You are this simple, beautiful mixture of red and white who yearns to do what all colors do: give brightness to this world. You wanted to be the color people would use to paint their houses, the color of bikes and toys no matter the gender. You wanted to be judged solely on your merits as a color and be loved for your essence, for your ability to illuminate and beautify an object or a person. You just wanted people to love you for you.
However, over time, I think humanity lost sight of this. We forgot that colors were not statements of the quality or character of a person. There is no evidence that indicates that men and women biologically prefer any color. The color pink does not point to being more feminine or masculine, nor does it correlate with either fragility or strength. It is just a color.
But we believe this, and this belief permeates our culture to a dangerous extent. When boys prefer pink, we don’t see a boy who prefers a color, we see a boy who is strange, who breaks a “golden code” of masculinity. People see a girl’s love for pink not as a simple preference but as proof that pink is for girls, girls will be girls, and that is the end of that. Pink is both praised as the height of femininity and degraded as a symbol of gender restriction. Sexists and even feminists have been guilty of failing to understand the purpose of colors, and have ( unintentionally) coded the color pink in the same limiting symbols they have encoded humans
I sometimes wonder whether we still actually love colors for what they really are. Do we really love pink because of its beauty? Do we really dislike it because we simply don’t find any aesthetic beauty in it? Or do we hate what ( we perceive) it represents?
So, on behalf of myself and the people who have failed to see the true purpose of the color pink and continue to see you as part of a gender role rather than a color, I am sorry.