Pink is not for Boys

I was at this mall the other day with one of my companions, looking for a birthday present for my dad. She was supposed to do the extraction but some people simply can’t resist the temptation offered by open doors, so there I was – stuck in the midst of an annoying exercise wherein people in an attempt to pursue the means forget that there is something at all called the end. After arguing with the betrayer of my intentions umpteen times that L’Oreal was the same brand as Garnier, and never managing to bring her round to my side, I threw up my hands and started looking for something that might interest me, in the hope that sooner or later she’d realise our sole purpose of being in the blasted mall. Suddenly, from behind the elevator area I saw a young mother coming towards us, dribbling with a pram in one hand and a cell phone in the other. Believe me, the little one in the pram was one terrified babe. Its eyes fidgeted in all possible directions, wondering what the trouble with the lady was. And the lady in a quick movement of agitation let go of the pram and it came to rest against my abdomen. What a painful relief from boredom! I cursed the lady telepathically and the child seemed to nod approvingly. Its mother still failed to realise that she had lost the baby and continued to subdue the father on the phone (I guessed from her tone.) I caressed the child’s forehead and suddenly it burst into a wail. Damn! People around me stared at me as if I had committed a crime. I managed, “I thought we were friends” when actually I had meant “I thought we had a common enemy”. This woke up my company from her obnoxious state and she held the child in her arms, staring into my sheepish eyes with the ruthless eyes of a tigress. Thankfully the child stopped howling and its mother came to fetch the pram. I exhaled a sigh of relief as the feeling of silent vindication crept in. “The child was cute”, she said. “I wonder if it was a boy or a girl”, I blurted out. “Duh, It was a girl”, was her reply. “HOW?”, I asked. It’s tough getting used to the supernatural powers girls exhibit sometimes when guys fail to be observant enough. Besides, my words betray my thoughts when I am perplexed, so I said, “You’ve got x-ray vision and you never told me? And I thought we knew each other.” Not appreciating the humour (girls seldom do It. It requires a non negative IQ. Kidding.), she burst out, “Are you insane? You actually believe that crap you just said? Didn’t you see the baby’s blanket was pink?” “Whoa, Whoa, Whoa”, I repeated, “I’m not sure, No and Yes I saw the pink blanket. But what has it got to do with whether the baby was a he or a she?”

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You must’ve grasped the essence of what transpired later. I asked her questions to unearth the mystery but she was not a genius after all (Kidding). So I had to seek the answers myself, and I found that surely there exists such a belief- more among women than in men- though none of the people I asked could convince me by their powers of eloquence or clarity of thought.

So the colour pink is not for boys after all. I sought some historical evidence and I’ll tell you what I found:

Once upon a time, the colour for boys was pink. Some argued that pink was a close relative of red, which was seen as a fiery, manly colour. Others traced the association of blue with girls to the frequent depiction of the Virgin Mary in blue. Pink being a more decided and stronger colour was more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, was prettier for the girl. Now during World War II, the Nazis made the homosexuals in their prison camps wear pink triangular badges as means of identifying them. Why they chose to profane (I chose this word specifically) the pink colour is something no one knows, but this is how pink came to mean a mark of the feminine. What the heck?

So, assigning colour to gender is a 20th century trait. On my part I don’t see any reason why guys shouldn’t sport pink- though I’d prefer darker shades myself. I'm no human rights activist but only an observer. And I ask, why associate colour with gender at all? I can understand girls vouching for this myth- they get to wear pink and this is one field guys can’t compete with them in. To even things out, maybe girls shouldn’t wear blue (which is another absurd remark but let’s just say it for the sake of argument) but it doesn’t happen that way. I’ve seen dozens of instances of girls mentioning on the internet that they get turned off by men in pink (you don’t have to believe me- just browse through the profiles of girls on Orkut). Well I’ve seen guys in pink – in fact one of my batch mates who’s got quite an impressive built goes to gym each evening in the same pink t-shirt – and I don’t find them feminine or homosexual. If the thing is just that guys don’t look good in pink, then I’d better not comment on the girls who wear shiny black jackets made of raxine along with a grey pair of jeans. Anyways I’m not someone who should comment on who looks good in what, but seriously people, we should not let such baseless assumptions hinder us from doing what we like doing. Pink is the colour!!

Aim for the moon; even if you miss you'll land among the stars

The title is a well known quote which I’m almost sure most of us would have heard. The message is clear: shoot for your goal, and if you miss you will still have achieved something. Positive thought, isn’t it? My critics often say that I’ve an aura of negativity around me (which they say is evident from what I write). I’m not sure I have it for I haven’t noticed any of it. It is just that I have a different perspective. In fact, I try to place myself at a vantage point from where I can see the things differently, but definitely more clearly than those in the views offered by the other similar positions. Or I might be incompetent to see things that others see. Negative or not, I have a protocol of understanding things: first I question them, then I analyse them and then I decide whether or not I believe in them, and while doing so I totally disregard the reputation of the proposer.


Once again I have decided to analyse. This time the subject under study is a quote- the title of this piece – enunciated by W. Clement Stone. Since intellect lies in the ability to read between the lines, and the meaning between the lines is already clear, I’ll take on the more interesting task of reading the lines instead. The author was certainly imagining some game in his mind when he said the words, “Aim for the moon.” A sane guess would be archery or shooting. And then he adds, “even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” Well, there’s some fundamental flaw in the conclusion, for it contradicts the science we know. This guy lived a hundred years from 1902 to 2002 and this piece of information might come handy to convince ourselves that certainly there’s something wrong with the saying. I intend no disrespect to Stone or his sense of sapience but the chap must’ve struggled with his Geography or his maths, if at all he was a student. The moon is about 40.4 x 10^-9 light-years away from the earth. On the other hand, the nearest known star (other than the Sun), Proxima Centauri, is about 4.22 light-years away. Now you do the math. The stats reveal that the nearest star is too far away than the moon is from us and we simply can’t reach the stars if we are aiming for the moon. Nevertheless crap is crap and you can’t get rid of it for it is a gift from nature and you can’t say no to nature. So there we go, aiming for the moon and convincing ourselves that something good will come out of the exercise for we’ll land among the stars even if we miss.