I love the color pink. My laptop is pink, my phone is pink, my camera is pink, my bedroom walls are pink. It’s all pink, which is exactly as I want it. Pink makes me happy!

It is possible that my ravenous craving for all things pink is resultant of sociocultural powers, environmental influences, or some other inconspicuous force. It is also possible that some natural force caused me to like the color pink just as anyone else would love the color green, or yellow, or red.

The color pink has developed meaning within the context of our culture. People often associate pink with tranquility, nurturing warmth, femininity, love, inhibition, emotional claustrophobia, emasculation, and physical weakness. The color has developed so much cultural meaning that colleges have painted visiting team locker-rooms pink to make opponents feel passive and emasculated before a game. Likewise, people automatically attribute characteristics to a person if, like me, they have a healthy obsession with the color pink. If you’re a woman and like the color pink, it’s assumed that you’re either hyper-feminine or a slave to the patriarchy. If you’re a man you lose your masculinity and are immediately categorized as “metrosexual” or homosexual.

Ultimately, the color pink doesn’t gain you respect in most professional domains. I’ve experienced this myself in the world of academia. In my time spent in this world I’ve realized that despite the fact that academics produce and consume hundreds of colorful and uniquely-designed presentations every year, they almost never contain the color pink. There are a number of possible explanations for this phenomenon, but the one that is most glaring to me is that academics are avoiding the color pink because of their fear of the many negative meanings the color has gained in our culture. They fear that the color alone will undermine their authority in research.

To put it frankly, I think that’s bull shit. I think it’s bull shit that a color needs to represent anything at all. The need to categorize everything is part of human nature and makes our cognitive processes more streamlined, but just because something is innate and natural to human functioning doesn’t mean that we humans need to succumb. It’s natural for us to defecate outdoors but we’ve curbed that natural tendency for the sake of our health (and to avoid a repeat of the black plague). Just as we control ourselves and use the toilet, we can control our natural tendency to connect meaning to color, especially when the meaning we attach is negative and harmful.

All this leads me to my mission. My mission is to start a movement to eliminate the negative connotation of the color pink, one presentation at a time. As part of this mission, every single one of my presentations includes the color pink and I have encouraged my colleagues to do the same. In doing this, I have realized just how much the color pink means to people, including my professors. One professor called my pink-inclusive presentation “pretty” while making no comment on the content of the material I presented. Other professors have been more supportive, but none use the color pink in their own presentations.

Ultimately this is a minuscule mission. When you consider the bigger picture, who really cares what people think about the color pink? However, I argue that this minuscule problem is just one facet of a larger problem. Just like the vast majority of people automatically attach a demeaning implication to the color pink, they automatically attach negative meaning to physical characteristics of people like race, language, and disability. This is wrong.

My hope is that perhaps through my Mission of Pink, I can not only erase the unfairly attributed negativity that our society has assigned to the color pink, but can also help people to realize that we cannot assume anything about quality or character simply based on appearance.

Keep on thinking,

Josie

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