I’m in the pink as obsession could be over (From Preston and Leyland Citizen)

I’m in the pink as obsession could be over

11:01am Monday 12th January 2009

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I WOULDN’T get that – it looks too boyish, and it’s in the boys’ department."

My sister had asked my advice about a rain mac which she was considering buying for a friend’s young daughter.

In blue stripes, with a red tractor on the front, she already had one for her son, but worried that it was perhaps too masculine.

I wanted to say it didn’t matter, that she would love it regardless, but, having two daughters, I erred on the side of caution and agreed.

When growing up, my girls loved pink – they wanted pink dresses, pink rooms, pink bedclothes and pink rugs.

Yet at no time had I steered them in this direction. In fact, I always tried to do the opposite, buying blue and green clothes and spouting lies about the pink stuff being in the wash.

It was hard for me to fathom – I was never a lover of pink. I used to scoff at the pink/blue greetings cards on sale for newborn babies, and the racks of pink clothes for girls and blue for boys in clothes shops.

Yet, in my experience, most girls do prefer pink. So how has this happened? The answer, it appears, lies with shops and toy makers, who have been accused of creating a ‘pink plague’ on the high street by offering products for girls almost exclusively in pink.

Experts claim this brain washes girls, and reinforces gender stereotypes.

They’ve got a point. When I was young, as far as I can remember, there wasn’t any pink stuff around at all. Girls wore pretty much the same colours as boys – brown, blue, green, red.

In fact, in those days, pink was a bit taboo. Had any girl in my peer group come out to play wearing pink she’d almost certainly have been teased.

Even at parties, we’d rather have worn camouflage commando gear than turn up in anything pink. A candy floss at the fair was about the only thing I bought in that colour.

Yet now we are, literally, swamped with pink. And, yes, it does seep into every pore. When shopping for paint for my youngest daughter’s room, she insisted we buy ‘Barbie Pink’ – the colour of her best friend’s bedroom.

I was amazed to discover that she was referring to a paint that actually went by that name.

Now 12 and 10, my daughters still like pink, the youngest lives in a pink world. She was given a pair of camouflage trousers for Christmas – in pink. However her older sister has shifted to vintage rose, recently chose a brown coat, and wants her room painting blue – the end could be in sight.

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