“My WWE Divas championship belt is pink and sparkly, but it doesn't mean I'm a princess. It means girls can kick butt!”

Eve Torres 

The color pink, as a symbol of femininity in the 21st century, has a number of meanings and can be used to denote a variety of objects, ideas, and moods. Pink is popular in advertising symbols and some of the brands promote the sweet and feminine (Victoria Secret PINK, Hello Kitty, Barbie). In the 2001 film Legally Blonde, Elle Wood, Harvard law student, was at first not taken seriously because she wore a lot of pink, which some correlated with girliness and weakness. She embraced it, showing strength and smarts. Some women (and men) dye their hair pink as a sign of edginess or rebellion (Pink is the new Punk!). In 2016, Pink was the name of a Bollywood movie protesting forced and violent rape and stressing the importance of a woman's consent. The title refers to the street slang for female genitalia. The Pussyhat Project and the 2017 Women’s March used pink hats and the reference to women’s genitals as a symbol of strong women advocating for rights and empowerment. Alecia Beth Moore, the singer known as Pink (stylized as P!nk), isn’t sweet-voiced. Her range is powerful and she uses it to stand up for underdogs, advocate self-love, inner power, courage, and political protest. She calls P!NK “a brand, a snarl.”

Women don’t have a lock on the color pink these days. Some companies (like LYFT ride-sharing with its pink mustache and Vineyard Vines clothing with a pink whale logo) target both male and female customers. In fact, men who wear pink are considered confident about their sexuality. Pink clothing for men (shorts, slacks, sweaters, shirts) is sold at many major retailers like J. Crew, Gap, Nautica, Ralph Lauren, Banana Republic, J McLaughlin, and even conservative Brooks Brothers. Pinkbike.com is a badass website for guys and girls. The name was originally thought up as a joke, the antithesis of names like "extremebiking.com" and "hardcorebiking.com." As time passed, word spread, and Pinkbike grew into a world-renowned source for mountain bike news.

Some male celebrities use pink to make themselves stand out. Rocker Rod Stewart sometimes wears a pink satin jacket and singer Harry Styles often performs in pink suits and shirts. Singer Joey Ramone used to hitchhike in pink, knee-high platform boots. Actor Ed Helms recalls a time when he wore pink Converse All Stars because he thought it made him seem daring and irreverent. Cam’ron, American rapper, record executive, actor, fashion designer, and Harlem trendsetter said, “When I first started wearing pink, it wasn't nothing I planned on doing or strategized. But people showed me so much love for the pink mink I wore, I had to go out to Pantone and create my own color, which is called Killa Pink.” 

 October is the month when pink is seen everywhere. From sports teams to people in the community, thousands participate and the goal is to educate people about the treatment and prevention of breast cancer in both men and women.

Pink Day, celebrated in the U.S. on June 23 and worldwide on many different dates, is a day to wear pink and stand up against the injustice of harassment and bullying, especially against minorities and those of the LGBTQ community. It was founded in 2007 by two teens from Canada after a gay boy was bullied for wearing a pink shirt.

Pink has a complicated history somewhat different from the current perceptions.

A light-hued mixture of red and white obtained from vegetable dyes surfaced between 3000 BC and 30 BC in ancient Greece. The color was called “rhodos.” Pastel shades were chiefly used for fabrics of lighter texture and women were especially fond of them.

 In Ancient Rome, there’s no mention of pink for clothing. Romans preferred white. The Dark Ages saw only subdued colors and the Middle Ages brought only the bright hues of stained-glass windows.

It wasn’t until the sixteenth century that paler colors came into use again, but there’s no mention of pink, perhaps because colors were often given exotic names (e.g. aurore, amorous desires, kiss-me-my-mignon).

Pink was first used as a color name in the 17th century, after a flower of the same name. Pink clothing wasn’t gender-specific for girls. European paintings showed young boys wore it too (e.g. Velasquez’s young boy in a black dress with a pink sash and Van Dyke’s young William II in pink hose and a pinkish-red dress).

Some paintings of the eighteenth century show this trend continued (e.g. John Singleton Copley’s young American boy wearing a black waistcoat with a pink satin collar, Larquilliere’s Prince Henry wearing a lace shirt with a pink underlining, and Francois Boucher’s French shepherd boy wearing a flowing pink tunic). 

In eighteenth century France, pastels were favored by Marie Antoinette and her court and it wasn’t sex-differentiated. Men might wear yellow breeches and a light-green coat with a pink and buff vest.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, men favored pale, neutral colors, but pink (called Levantine) was reserved for women. Pale shades were considered correct for evening although they continued to wear dark clothes during the day time. No mention is made of color differentiation between the sexes for children.

The 20th century brought the acceptance of light colors for daytime as well as evening, and “in the pink” came to mean good health and well-being for both sexes. Neon lights were invented in 1910 and some were pink. A “Pink Lady” drink (sweet and innocent-looking but packing a punch) was first referenced in a 1913 Manual of Mixed Drinks. The 1920s introduced pink nail polish and pink bubblegum. “Tickled pink,” an idiom that means one is well pleased, was first recorded in 1922 where it alluded to one's face turning pink with laughter when tickled. In The Great Gatsby, written in 1925, Jay Gatsby wears a pink suit. It wasn’t a sign of femininity but of “new money.” At the time, pink represented the working classes. The word “pinko” was coined in 1925 in the United States as a pejorative to describe a person sympathetic to communism. (The reasoning: pink is a lighter shade of red, a color associated with communism, so pink could describe a lighter form of communism.) In 1929, gender differentiation of pink for girls and blue for boys first appeared in Bologna, Italy when a midwife started the fashion for colored ribbons to announce the birth of a baby. 

In the 1940s, U.S. WWII Army officers wore light-shade trousers called “pinks” (for the pinkish cast to the light drab cloth). Heterosexual military men accepted the color and the name. On the German side, homosexual prisoners were forced to wear pink triangles. The Nazis perceived pink as feminine and a way to mark gay men as effeminate. 

Pink became trendy in the 1950s when even some cars were pink and the U.S. president’s wife, Mamie Eisenhower, popularized pale pink clothing for women. Men stayed shy of it, but teenage boys in the 1950s and 60s often wore a pink carnation in their lapels to proms. 1963 saw the introduction of the Pink Panther film character- a male who was bumbling but clever in spite of himself. Perhaps the cartoon humor excused a pink coat of male fur at a time when wearing pink was risky for men. 

By the 1970s, pink tuxedo shirts and cummerbunds were worn by some males. The term “pink-collar” was popularized in the late 1970s to denote jobs perceived as women’s work (like nurses, secretaries, and elementary school teachers). Toward the end of the 70s, pink became a symbol of rebellious youth. 1979 saw a number of rock groups with pink in their names—Pink Floyd, Pink Cadillac, Pink Section, and a Japanese bubblegum-sound group Pink Lady. As a counterpoint to rebellion, some correctional institutions began using pink on the walls to soothe inmates—“pink clinks” as Time magazine called them. 

During the 1990s, the discrimination of the gay community diminished, broadening LGBTQ people's access to formerly heteronormative jobs and leading to increased spending power—the so-called “pink economy.” 

Despite the progress, today’s gender-reveal powders come in pink and blue, and pink still isn’t accepted by many as gender neutral. It’s strange because the cones at the back of your eyeball, sitting on the thin, light-sensitive retina, are red, blue, and green sensitive. To be perceived, light pink needs red cones to fully react, and both blue and green cones to partially activate. The RBG spectrum is pretty gender-neutral, isn’t it?