Why we should think pink

Lauren Bravo writes: Ah, non-uniform days. However distant a memory those schooldays may be, it’s still a phrase that strikes terror into the heart of many a stylista. The pressure! The anxiety! The sweats! How to disguise the fact Mum bought it?

How to vamp it up enough for maximum school-gate exposure without actually risking expulsion? How to collect just the right amount of status-appropriate style kudos without taking it too far, upstaging the queen bully, and earning oneself a beating with a platform trainer in the hockey cupboard? As the first sartorial minefield we encounter in life, it’s also potentially the most crushing.

My own worst mufti memory dates from Year 7. Age: 12, social position: middling, nickname: ‘Boffin’. I’d already made some fairly risky non-uniform choices up to this point – fleece gilet, neon trainers, one cropped top too many. But this was a fashion error that earned me bullying like none before. The crime? I wore a pink top. It was Miss Selfridge, true, which was quite a credible statement in a room full of Tammy Girl and BHS. But it was pink. I may as well have embroidered “kick me hard and steal my gel pens” on the back of my PE kit.

Pink, to my middle school class, was strictly contraband. Pink was for girls, and not the kind of girls it was acceptable to be. It might sound alien to today’s generation of increasingly glam Topshop tweens, but in my day, real girls wore… um, khaki. Seriously. All Saints had a lot to answer for.

However, while I’ve resented those bullies for the last ten years, it seems now there may have been method in their meanness. Or at least, Emma and Abi Moore might think so. Backed by Justice Minister Bridget Prentice, their PinkStinks campaign has been hitting headlines with its backlash against the “pinkification” of marketing aimed at young girls. Campaigners are striving to promote positive role models in place of the sugar-coated gender stereotypes sold by advertisers, even calling for a Christmas boycott of the Early Learning Centre, one of the worst pink-peddling offenders.

But just how potent is pink? From Barbara Cartland to Barbie, it’s a colour with a lot to answer for (and not just my pre-teen bruises). Once out of Toys ‘R’ Us and into the adult realm, it may not be used to sell us princess paraphernalia anymore – but sometimes it isn’t so far off. Think of Marilyn in the rose-coloured satin, teaching us that a girl’s real best friends are Harry Winston and Tiffany. Molly Ringwald reinvented the colour with her ’80s DIY styling in Pretty in Pink (not to mention busting the myth that redheads should refrain), but there’s no escaping the Cinderella connotations when she snags her wealthy high school Prince Charming, Blaine.

And back in this decade, pink has been adopted by a parade of dubious female icons. Jordan. Paris Hilton. Paris Hilton’s dog. Kelly Brook in that Julien McDonald number. Even casting the patriarchy aside for a moment, pink still runs the risk of looking obvious. But however heavy the associations of princesses and Playboy, it finds its way onto the catwalk season after season – in 2008 it was neon splashes, this year we had dusky nudes, and next season looks set to be all about sugared almond shades. Designers love a challenge; maybe why they’re so keen to have a go at reclaiming a colour with such a bad rep. Pink is all over January’s Vogue, which teams pastel lace up with black leather and brothel creepers in an attempt to prove feminine strength doesn’t need to get lost among the frou-frou layers.

So perhaps, (for the sake of nifty alliteration), we should think of it as the pink paradox. The long established colour of all things feminine, pink has become both a banner and a curse – prescribed to us by advertisers, sold to us by celebs, reinvented for us by designers. As research, I put on my own favourite pink dress, an unashamedly girlie vintage lace mini-shift. “Why do I like this dress?” I asked myself. “Why why why? Is it because the colour, in mirroring my blushing, maidenly cheeks, projects an image of vulnerable femininity that might attract my fairytale match?” Possibly. But mainly, it’s because it was a fiver, and nobody has ever bullied me in the playground for wearing it.

While you ponder the issue, I’ll leave you with these words from Funny Face, summing up the paradox of pink – as 50s magazine editor Maggie Prescott dances round her rosy-hued office, she sings, “I wouldn’t presume to tell a woman what a woman oughtta think. But tell her if she’s gotta think: think pink…”