Thinking Pink - Part One
Messi! Messi! Messi! I have clicked on this futbolista’s highlight reels often enough that a picture of him in his pink Inter Miami jersey pops up on my Instagram feed daily. His team is the first American major league or college organization to embrace the color for its uniforms. Pop Art, Art Deco and Pink – it’s so Miami.
I used to loathe seeing the color pink except where it belonged - flamingos, Bazooka Bubblegum, and a certain cartoon panther. I once casually mentioned my distaste for the color on social media and the blow-back in comments was quick. Friends prescribed artists to follow on Instagram that wallow in - sorry - are immerse in pink. It’s been a slog.
I’m certain that the trouble started with Pepto Bismol, the color of which subjected me at an impressionable young age to a visceral association with nausea. Nausea aside, it also bothered me that pink was the color reserved only for little girls’ clothes and accessories, blue just for boys. Perhaps Mamie Eisenhower’s pink inaugural gown started the trend in 1948, but I blame marketers in the 1950s for gender-coding pink. It must have been an easy color to reproduce, so much of it appearing in advertising. Today, thankfully, pink and blue are fairly back to gender neutral, Barbie notwithstanding (at this writing I haven’t seen the movie).
click on the right side of image below to scroll left to right.
Further thoughts on the color pink in an upcoming post; why I could never understand what was so great about Philip Guston.
(Philip Guston)
I consulted with my daughter for this pink project, and movie connoisseur that she is, in a heartbeat I received a YouTube link to a clip from the 1957 film “Funny Face”. The scene “Think Pink” is a must watch. With an outstanding performance by the inimitable Kay Thompson, it became a delightful affirmation while exploring the color. My radar for pink was primed. And I now see it and love it - everywhere.
Thank you, Leo and Philip (later post), a.k.a. Messi & messy, and all the pink-obsessed artists I now follow, for bringing me around. And thank you Annie for the icing on the cake. Now, have a peek at my “Pretty in Pink” gallery.
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