I have a particular type of headache reserved only for when I have been staring at endless miles of pink stuff for long periods of time. I had one the other day; in fact it comes and goes still. You see, my daughter just turned seven. She had a party. She got lots of pink stuff.
Why is it that (a) girls aged seven lo-o-o-ove pink, and (b )there seems to be only one hideous shade of pink available to purchase? Those of you who buy things for little girls will know instantly what sickening shade I refer to. If you don’t, you need only take two steps into the girls’ section of a large department store – choose clothes or toys, it really doesn’t matter, and you will see it…no.. your eyes will be accosted by it. It’s that pink that sits half way between a strawberry Chupa Chup and a Red Skin lolly, with a bit of Barbie thrown in. It’s the pink of the sediment at the bottom of your glass of strawberry milk and if you could taste it, it would taste like pure icing sugar. If you could smell it, it would smell like a Strawberry Shortcake showbag, and if you could hear it, it would sound like a Mr Whippy van.
It doesn’t matter that I’ve chosen carefully co-ordinated butter creams and soft greens for my daughter’s bedroom. Stick twenty-three Department Store Pink things in there and it looks like a disaster scene from a bubble gum factory. I could stick a mirror ball in there and it would still be outshone by the glare of the pink burning (a hole into my cornea) brightly.
In the last seven years I have learnt that pretty much anything is available in pink. Pink coat hangers, pink computers, pink shoe laces, pink sleeping bags, pink chairs, even pink food. Little girls love it, to the exclusion of all the other colours in the spectrum. Perfectly delightful teddy bears in rich browns (last time I looked bears were generally brown) sit discarded and alone as Department Store Pink bears enjoy shopping trips and sleep overs. I’m had a hard time convincing my daughter we were NOT selecting her school based on whether or not the uniform was pink.
I’d desperately like to know where the obsession comes from in case there’s a chance I can reverse it. Then I could push a nice neutral colour like….sand…and get rid of this incessant headache. In the vein of what comes first – the chicken or the egg, from where does the fascination for all things pink come? Is it something genetic that manifests simply by being a little girl, or is it that shops only sell pink stuff, therefore little girls learn to love it? Or do shops only sell pink stuff because little girls love it? Is it nature or nurture? Oh dear…I can feel another headache coming on…
What fashion statement are your kids making this week?
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Mihiri Udabage is a 30-something mother of two, now feeling old enough to use terms like 30-something. She loves Sundays more than Saturdays but is grateful for both. She hates ironing. In between growing up two little citizens, Mihiri spends time working on her on-line Fair Trade and Organic business www.generationwonder.com, volunteering for global charity Room to Read, doing canteen duty at school, and entering Fun Runs she has no hope of actually running. Mihiri has a husband who thinks she is loopy but who supports her anyway. She wishes she had written Twilight but acknowledges that could never happen because she can never remember her dreams. However, Mihiri is about to enrol in a screenwriting course that will see her write a movie that will knock Twilight for a six. Mihiri continues to dream...
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