Keep our bright new world pretty in pink
IPRE-DATE the panoply of pinkness. Don’t believe what they tell you about the Sixties. The Beatles may have been grooving about Carnaby Street with Twiggy and David Bailey but everyone else was living in a black and white, barely post-rationing universe. It’s difficult to describe the monochrome bleakness and the stultifying lack of colour design and choice. Pencils were red or blue. Plimsolls – trainers hadn’t been invented – came in black, black or black. Flip-flops were ugly and white-rimmed in red or blue.
Schoolwork files for were red or blue. On a British beach, kids lucky enough to sport swimwear – lots wore dresses tucked into knickers or rolled-up school pants – had the same British Home Stores costume in red or blue. Girls’ socks were white. School shoes were brown.
Lycra hadn’t reached the UK. Leisurewear didn’t exist. Disney stores hadn’t reached these shores. Lunchboxes weren’t a thing. Bedrooms were distempered in magnolia.
If you were born later you won’t be able to imagine the sensory famine.
Television was black and white. It stayed that way in our house till Princess Anne’s first wedding in 1973. Toilet paper – if you didn’t use the scratchy, tracing-paper one – was white. Fruit was apples and oranges.
Hair conditioner didn’t exist, and the weekly comb-out of matted tangles was hell.
I am building up to a little girl’s world utterly devoid of the shade, mood and feeling I craved more than anything – pink.
NO ONE told me pink was a “girlie” colour. There was the old playground refrain “pink, pink to make the boys wink” but pink itself was almost non-existent.
Even the best party dresses came in red or blue velvet for winter and white with a pale blue trim for summer. Grannies could be prevailed upon to knit a pink jumper but the pink was a hideous, vicious abomination.
So I have never decried the current prominence of pink. I adore it. Obviously it should be an equal-opportunities colour. Boys are entitled to revel in it.
Dressing my grandchildren in shades of pink is bliss. I am writing this because of claims the new Barbie movie used the planet’s pink paint quota, creating a world shortage. I urge manufacturers to step up production. We need pink. It is the colour of peace, romance, propagation and prettiness.