Living in the pink
“The answer, I think, is that millennial pink isn’t so much a colour as it is an idea”
Once upon a time I hung out with a guy who, on one occasion at least, blurted out the oddest remark.
We were in his kitchen, looking at photos of a house in the east end he was considering buying — for himself, not for us to share — when he informed me that should we ever live together, all he’d request is a man cave whose decor is untouched by a feminine hand. I can paint the rest of the house pink, he said, just as long as he gets a room to himself, decorated the way he likes.
Uncharacteristically speechless, I stared at him a moment.
“Um, did we just meet?” I asked, reeling from the unfurling of this giant red flag. “What in the world makes you think I would paint my house pink?”
Flash forward a bunch of years later and the guy is no longer around but the colour pink is everywhere — in clothing, accessories and home decor. Not just any pink, though. It’s called Millennial Pink for some reason, and despite my best efforts to understand why shades ranging from bubble gum to salmon have all been dubbed “millennial” anything, the best I can figure out is that everyone else is trying to answer the same question.
“The answer, I think, is that millennial pink isn’t so much a colour as it is an idea — hence the great difficulty in pinning it down to a single shade,” writes Nancy Mitchell for Apartment Therapy. “Millennial pink, whether pale or desaturated or salmony, is a kind of non-pink pink, an esthetic distillation of the ideals of contemporary feminism: unabashedly female, but removed from the constraining associations of the past. It is, in a lot of ways, defined more by what it isn’t than what it is: not Barbie. Not bubble gum. Not princessy.”
Wowiezowie. That’s a lot to put on a colour. And with all due respect to Nancy Mitchell from Apartment Therapy, I’ve seen the pinkiest Barbie pinks slapped with the millennial label, not simply the diluted pinks of contemporary feminism.
And with all due respect to my millennial peeps, many of whom I do greatly admire, especially for their unabashed refusal to be stepped on and taken advantage of because of their gender, there is an entire millennial movement that harks to an era when it was fashionable for women to spend their days in an apron, making sure the house is clean and dinner is on the table when their husband gets home.
I get that the whole hipster thing is about ironically throwing back to a simpler time, etc. But it’s not ironic if you live it, emulate it, believe it. Is it? And to each his/her own, but please don’t try to sell me on how empowering it is to spend your days thinking only of your husband’s needs. So no, I’m not buying the whole millennial pink = the representation of female empowerment argument. Nice try, though.
Anyhoo, I can get with this pink for certain things: bags, shoes, jackets, dresses. But when I bought my current home, it was floor to floor pinky-beige shag carpeting, offset by dark brown walls through most of the house, Smurf blue walls in the basement. It didn’t inspire me to take on the world, but it did push me to hire contractors who installed new flooring and painted as quickly as possible, lest I not have to spend one night in a home with pinkish shag carpeting. (Carpeting that was probably installed in a year when the younger Millennials were being born.)
But by removing the pink carpet, diluted in colour by age and wear and tear, was I ripping out the part of me that feels empowered and strong? Nope. It was smelly and old and I was glad to see it go. Does this make me less of a feminist? Self check: Nope, I still believe I deserve to be treated equally to men. Phew.
So the next time you’re out shopping and you pick up a Rose Quartz (Pantone’s colour of the year for 2016) or Pale Dogwood (on Pantone’s Fashion Color Report Spring 2017 list) bag, keep in mind that some observers might think you’re making a sociopolitical statement.
And others like me will just wonder where you bought it and if they have any left.