I’m sure that many in our generation can relate to such a desertion, as pink became the embodiment of every silent stereotype we were uncovering. It felt frivolous, unserious, and vain. After years of avoiding the colour out of fear of appearing too “girly” — one has to step back and question, why were we criticising the colour itself rather than our fear of being “girly” in the first place? After all, I’m sure my ten-year-old self who would rush to volunteer after the teacher asked for ‘big strong boys’ to lift chairs would hate to think that I was unfaithful to the feminist agenda.
Reclaiming pink reminds us that at the end of the day, colours are just colours, and what we need to reject is its reputation. Reclaiming the colour means separating it from weighty biases, artificially produced from decades of marketing, advertising, and cultural narratives, and realising that pink can be just as modern and gender-neutral as any other color.
"...by restricting pink we are restricting our own self expression. "
Pink is incredibly versatile, from the boldness of hot pink and warmness of dusty pink, each shade evokes a completely different feeling; so by restricting pink we are restricting our own self expression. Whether you decide to wear pink because you want to connect with your childhood self, want to challenge norms, or simply because that was all that was left in your wardrobe before wash-day — I’m sure that we can all agree that a pink renaissance is long overdue.
Needless to say, no one should be forced to wear pink, but reclaiming the colour is about letting go of the idea that a certain colour says something more fundamental about who we are. We should wear the colour despite its baggage, or perhaps even because of it.