It occurs to me as I type in the title of this piece that I may generate hits from some fans of the singer Pink. Who seems like a perfectly nice person but isn’t the pink I’m talking about. On the other hand, I find it fortuitous to have the opportunity to declare “I like pink” to a few extra people, given how many have heard me viciously attack the color pink in the past.
Some context is necessary here.
Starting with my first pregnancy, I had a great fear of pink. Pink little girl outfits with ruffles and ribbons. Tiny pink bows that some mothers affix to bald baby heads in a frequently futile effort to make their androgynous babies look feminine. (”My sister put a pink bow on her daughter’s head,” a friend of mine once told me. “Strangers told her how cute her little boy was and asked why she put a pink bow on him.”) Shiny little Mary Janes with paired with pink socks, and sparkly pink princess clothes, and mounds of pink doll-like dresses that I was just certain strangers were waiting to buy for my child if only she turned out to be a girl.
Jake, of course, did not turn out to be a girl. But even before we found out he would be a boy, we warned our friends and family that the sex of our child would be strictly between me and Mike. Primarily because we thought it would be nice to have at least one aspect of the pregnancy a private matter between just the two of us. But, really, what a huge side benefit to know that if we did turn out to be having a girl she could remain free of others’ gender conventions for at least the time she spent in utero.
This time, not only did the rest of the world not know we were having a girl, but we didn’t either, having decided that we had already pondered all the big boy/girl decisions during my first pregnancy (to circumcise or not to circumcise? that is the question) and therefore didn’t need to know the baby’s sex ourselves. So no worries about the dreaded explosion of pink that I feared would bury both me and my girl baby in a sea of Strawberry Quick colored blankets and dresses.
This child, I thought proudly, would arrive in the world a clean slate, no expectations piled upon … um, her.
As soon as she was a “her,” the pink card showed up on her hospital bassinet. And I didn’t much care. Maybe I was already sliding down the slope to my first Lily purchase — the pink Old Navy tee-shirt with the ruffled sleeves and Lucy Toothy decal and the hot pink polka dot pants with the ruffled ankles.
They are far from the last pink items I have purchased. And even futher from the last ones I will ever buy.
Because, after opening gift upon gift of beautiful pink dresses with, yes, bows (but no ruffles), after oohing and ahhing like the most pink-addled of mothers, after thrilling at how girl-like my three-week-old looks in her pink clothes, it is time for me to admit it. I like pink.
Continue reading ‘I Like Pink’
