Pink is for girls,” we often hear. Toys, clothes, accessories, cartoons… In fact, pink makes everything it colors feminine. Although this duo may seem immemorial, even natural, to us, the connection between this shade and women is rather recent in history. And it is not without consequences.
In Pink. A color struggling with genderthe artist and researcher in arts and gender studies Kévin Bideaux looks at the unique place that this nuance occupies in the West, and traces its social, artistic, political and cultural history.
For Kévin Bideaux, the color pink is almost an obsession. “When I was in high school, around 17, my boyfriend had a pink shirt in his wardrobe that he never wore, for fear of being teased. We were in the early 2000s, in a small town in France. I decided to put it on. Indeed, it got people talking. I first approached this garment as my pride personal, autonomous and more or less discreet, then my relationship with color deepened. »
Today, the researcher is literally covered in pink from head to toe. He made the choice to remove all other colors from his life; an experience of “artialization” of everyday life that he himself calls “monochromatism”. “Besides my appearance, my entire environment, from bedding to accessories to walls, is pink. It’s causing me a lot of trouble. I had difficulty finding a job, housing, progressing in my career. From a point on, despite all the inconveniences, it became almost impossible to give up. Pink is now an integral part of me. It’s torture to wear anything else. »
It is therefore following the reflections that this experience imposed on his daily life, as well as the remarks, insults, challenges and reluctance that his appearance arouses that the essay was born. Pinkan extended version of his doctoral thesis.
For the author, being collectively interested in pink and its symbolism is not trivial. “Preconceived ideas linked to the color pink are eminently anchored in our cultures, and reveal our relationship to gender. Studying pink allowed me to identify all the micro-events and all the micro-strategies which, over the centuries, have encouraged the establishment of stereotypes and thought patterns in which, in particular, women are inferior to men. »
A recent phenomenon
Although today pink is automatically associated with femininity — a combination brought back this summer with all the marketing around the film barbie —, this arrangement is recent in the history of humanity.
“Until the 18th centurye century, pink rather marked a class distinction. This pastel shade was difficult to achieve and fragile. It was the color of the rich. During the French Revolution, we wanted to sweep away everything that was linked to the aristocracy, including elements of their outfit, effeminate gestures, ribbons, lace, embroidery, wigs and makeup,” says Kévin Bideaux. .
At the end of the 19th centurye century, Sigmund Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality, in which he assumed that to avoid neuroses in adulthood, children must identify as quickly as possible with their own sex, changed the situation. “From then on, we began to put in place stratagems to differentiate boys and girls, in toys and in clothing. Quite early on, we focus on blue and pink, but while boys quickly free themselves from the shackles of their color, women are trapped there. In the 1970s, the rise of mass marketing consolidated this association, which is almost impossible to break away from today. »
If this dichotomy between pink and blue persists, it is in particular because conservative groups have appropriated them to reinforce the message of the distinction between genders and the societal organization that it presupposes. “It is often insinuated that pink could create confusion among boys, in the tradition of Freud. In the West, particularly in the United States, we tend to fall back on the family unit as soon as we go through a moment of crisis. There is a desire to keep the gender paradigm intact, since the traditional family — a dad, a mom and children — is necessary to perpetuate the nation. »
Furthermore, the fact of assigning a gender to toys by color contributes to the learning of femininity by girls, on the basis of a conception of women as opposed and subordinate to men, according to Kévin Bideaux. “Pink is associated with stereotypes that do not necessarily highlight the feminine: the child, the Barbie, the housewife, the bimbo. By activating these symbolic boxes which are also categories, we renew the idea that a woman is not a man, and that femininity is there to please. Every time we talk about it — and I include my book in that — we maintain this gender system which widens inequalities. I dream of a day when pink will have so many meanings that it won’t mean anything at all. »