Pink is a feminist statement.

As much as I hate the pink aisle at the toy shop, as much as I hate the fact that nearly any where you go little girls' clothes go from pink to slutty without anything in between (whereas little boys' go from Thomas the Tank Engine to, well, normal, you know), as much as I hated it when my daughter's kindergarten's class was divided into boys and girls and the girls had to shout  'I do!' when the teacher asked 'who loves pink?', as much as, well, I hate all of this, I have to say, pink is sometimes pretty cool.


Here's a list of pink things I have:

A pink netbook: an NC10, with Ubuntu installed ever since I virused it.

A pink phone. Well, it's sort of lilac, which is one of the many ways in which it's unsatisfactory. I should have resisted the urge to buy a not-quite-pink phone and then I might have had one that worked a little better too. (I want a iPhone. Or a Google Phone. It's fine if they're not pink: see below).

A pink iPod touch cover. Not one of those overpriced apple ones, or one of those supermarket copies. Oh no. I have a crocheted one, with a little pink ribbon and a pink teddy bear button to hold it in place. I didn't crochet myself, but found a piece already made in a bag of whole my friend Jo gave us when she left town.

A pink kettle in my office at work. It's big and round, and the body is transparent pink with white top and bottom. Lovely. A pink Cath Kidston mug to go with it.

Some pink pens, pencils, notebooks, etc. In particular I have some pink moleskins which 'im indoors bought me, and which I love. I was always ambivalent about moleskins, as on the one hand they're supposed to be for writers, but on the other, the writers who actually used them were very 'male'. So having a pink one is a nice way of slicing off some of Hemingway's superfluous balls.


So not everything should be pink, of course. I would not decorate my home in pink. That would just be irritating, and wouldn't go so well with all the old Turkish carpets, copper tables and antique chests that clutter our home and make it look like the Grand Bazar of Instanbul. And I certainly never dressed my daughter in pink. Or bought her pink toys. In fact, I spotted some dollhouse furniture that would sort of fit in my son's house, but didn't buy it because they were all pink - who's ever heard of a pink bath or oven...

I could do it the other way round, I could have a sober grey, or tasteful beige office, and come home to extravagant pink. But the joy of owning things which belong to the world of work, the world of important people, the world of men, and for them to be pink is unutterable.  The very thought that I bring into the 'serious world of men' part of the frivolousness women were confined in for so long is priceless. I'm not trying to fit in at work. It's my world too. Also, I like my home the way it is. It's neither masculine nor feminine. It's how we like it.