Everything in my life that can be pink is pink. From the soft blush color of my room to my pink phone case, I have pink-ified just about every aspect of my life. In fact, it is hard to believe there was ever a time I vehemently hated the color.
If you asked me my favorite color when I was a kid, I would have said teal. I even picked teal when my mom decided to repaint my room when I was 10. She asked if I was sure, and I said yes. This very, very bad decision would lead to years enveloped by the brightest, most eye-burning version of teal. I hate teal, and I lied often about genuinely loving it.
I guess I was so ride-or-die for teal for so long because it was not as “girly” as pink was. I hated being called “girly” because, to me, it meant I was less tough, less capable, less smart, less interesting. I felt that being a girl or indulging in girly things took away from my accomplishments, which often felt like the sum of my self-worth.
I have always been super smart. My parents would call me beautiful, of course, but compared to the other girls around my age, I was best known for my brain, which was constantly awarded praise and the highest marks in class. It came to a point where I inherently started associating my intelligence with my value. No one called me pretty as much as they called me smart.Â
As my sister and close cousins were being called pretty and getting all of the attention from boys, I was relegated to being “the smart one.” When I was younger, I shamefully resented my little sister and close girl cousins for being able to freely embrace femininity and their shared love of makeup, boys and other “girly” things without diminishing their “value.” It was not until my 20s that I realized how jealous I was of them, and how wrong I was.
I did not like makeup because of the mess it created; but I remember watching them have fun together while I sat in the other room with the adults and pretended to be disinterested. Even though I hated the feeling of makeup smeared messily on my eyelids, I can admit I wanted to share in the girlhood they were experiencing.Â
Even though we were close in age, it was obvious they did not feel the same pressures I did. While their favorite colors were proudly pink or purple, I tentatively chose teal.Â
As much as it might seem like I am blaming the adults in my life for my insecurities, it was not their fault, at least not entirely. It was not their fault that I preferred books over makeup. It was not their fault that their traditional notions of success led to me burying my femininity. It was, however, a little their fault for perpetuating a system so harmful to women that it made me feel disconnected from femininity.
I never hated being a girl; I was just ashamed of it. It felt like an obstacle I had to overcome in order to earn real respect, the respect I deserved. After a while, because my intelligence defined my relationships with my family and all I could ever achieve, I chased academic validation over everything else. My femininity had to be something to bury to prove that I was worth investing in or being proud of. I truly felt like I needed to be different from the other girls in order to succeed in life.
I picked teal and clothing that covered my entire body from head to toe, even wearing hoodies in the summer, because I felt stifled by the patriarchal definition of “girl.” I was so stifled that I thought distancing myself from femininity would lighten the burden. I could not see that I could be feminine, intelligent and successful at the same time.
At such a young age, I had internalized so much misogyny. I let misogyny dictate my childhood and keep me from loving “girly” stuff out loud.Â
I can talk about gender as a construction and the dangers of misogyny, the patriarchy and the influences of our capitalist system all day. But, in this article, I just want to reflect on the hurt. Since I was not “cute,” I felt my only value to the world was my brain. This is incredibly damaging to my self-esteem and sense of self. I turned to hating my body, my face and my “girly” interests because my education and academic interests were my only chance at competing within the systems surrounding me.
In case you are wondering, I am the most academically successful person in my family. I am only successful, however, because I did not let myself continue to dull my femininity. It was around my freshman year of college, in fact, when I began to wear bold eyeliner and painted my room pink and decorated it with “girly” things like gold picture frames, Lego flowers and a floral quilt. My need for academic validation never went away, but embracing my femininity has allowed me to be my truest self.
As a girl, I picked teal. As a woman, I pick pink. I pick pink not because it is a girly color but because it is the color I am tired of denying as my favorite.