I am starting work on a paper on the colour pink. This follows the one on yellow that I gave at the Association of Art Historians at their Warwick University conference last year. It awaits being turned into a chapter of a book mapping the symposium of which it was a part. This next effort, more precisely, on psychodynamic understandings of pink is full of challenge. I would be interested in blog followers letting me have an idea of their understandings of pink. Why is it such a dangerous colour for many men and yet attractive to others in a risky way? Why are men considered brave if they wear pink shirts or pullovers? Is it just because of a link with homosexuality? Why do you think pink is linked to homosexuality? How culturally specific are these pink links?
If you could take a moment to give me your thoughts on pink I would be most grateful and gladly note your contribution if it gets to print.
When I was growing up in Syston we had "pinks" in the flower beds, which I always liked, and my mother and grandmother knew an elegant old lady whose name was Miss Pink and it seemed to suit her very well. I'm not sure how old I was when I first associated pink with girls/being girlish but I must have been pretty young. As I became increasingly aware of my sexuality I somehow became conscious (but I'm not sure how) that wearing pink clothes might be a "give away" that I was gay - and therefore somehow dangerous. Well into adulthood I had the notion that only the most butch men could get away with wearing pink and not be at least suspected of being gay. I think this was all well before I became aware of the significance of pink triangles. For many years my favourite colour has been blue and I have surrounded myself in it, wondering now if this is internalised homophobia and an attempt to over-assert my gender identity using socially constructed colour symbols and distance myself from an association with (and other's suspicion of) femininity/homosexuality.
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