I Hate Pink (An Ode To Being An Eight-Year-Old Girl)

At an early age, I would not have considered myself a girly girl or a tomboy. I didn’t fall into either category like my friends did. I never wore dresses to school and refused any outfit that wasn’t my signature jean capris and green Bobby Jack shirt. 

At about seven or eight years old, my dad and I went to pick up a fuchsia bike from an eBay sale. I have a clear memory of being excited for a “big-kid bike.” I was soon rejected when the seller asked my dad if I still liked pink, and he turned to me for an answer. 

It felt like a turning point for me. I felt myself growing up, wondering if I ever really did like pink. Was it just a societal expectation for me to like the color, or was it true love? 

It was a moment of questioning for me. I felt lost in my childhood in a way I never had before. 

My final answer was, “No, I don’t like pink anymore.”

The seller told me I was too young to not like pink and told me to wait a few more years. I felt rejected. How could I be too young to know?

From that time until I was in middle school, I made it my mission to reclaim a love for pink, but I couldn’t find it in myself to do so. 

This became more complicated as I started to embrace my gender expression and sexuality. I saw two distinctly different versions of lesbians— the ones who wore dresses and called themselves femme, and the ones who wore sports bras and boxers. 

Just as I had felt before, I didn’t know how to classify myself. I didn’t want to be a pink-loving girl in fear of being called femme. I refused to be “masc” because it meant throwing away a piece of being the little girl I once was (and tried to be). 

As I approached the end of high school, I found myself leaning toward a more feminine expression most days and wearing blazers and dress pants on other days. I called myself “a femme in a blazer” and felt the most affirmed I ever had. 

I was still not a “pink girl,” but I was feminine in my own way. I refused to curl my hair, but I chopped it to my shoulders and finally wore it down instead of in a tight bun on top of my head. 

In college, I started to love pink again. I bought a pair of hot pink Converse and embraced them. I joined Her Campus, where our photo ops were pink-focused, and I felt like I could maybe claim pink as my own for the first time. 

I would still consider myself more of an earth-tone fan with lots of greens and browns, but I am proud of my roots as a wannabe pink lover.

Pink, for me, is a reminder of being a little girl lost in the world of blue versus pink. 

Dear little Alexis, don’t feel discouraged as you find your place in the world. You’ll find ways to embrace society’s feminine expectations for you, but it’s special that you don’t fit all the standards because you’re you!

• feminist
• girlhood
• growingup
• pink