Pink is powerful

Yet negative connotations have been attributed to the colour pink. In other words, pink has been getting a bad name. 'PinkStinks', titled 'the campaign for real role models', challenges 'the culture of pink', seeking to give girls 'inspiration to achieve great things'.

Zoe Wood of The Observer recounts - as a major achievement claimed by PinkStinks – the change in London children's store Hamleys. PinkStinks' '… campaign against the toy industry's narrow view of gender roles gains ground after Hamleys abandons colour-coded floors':

When two sisters launched an "anti-pink" campaign two years ago to liberate girls from a toy industry dedicated to churning out pretty princesses for girls, they had no idea of the fuss it would cause. 'We got hate mail from all over the world,' says Emma Moore, one half of PinkStinks, the group she runs with her twin sister, Abi. 'They said things like "you must be lesbians, you're ugly". The reaction was so extreme you'd think we'd tried to cancel Christmas.'

Notwithstanding the backlash, the sisters [are] at the vanguard of a movement whose time may have come. When … Hamleys stopped labelling its floors in blue for boys and pink for girls … and rearranged toys by type rather than gender, there were loud cheers from those who believe the pre-teen pink-blue divide has gone too far.

Concerns about the commercialisation of the 'pink is for girls' phenomenon has made Disney shops a target, filled as they are with row upon row of pink tutus, pink fairy wings, pink wands, pink make-up cases with miniature pink lipstick tubes, powder puffs, hairclips, bows – alongside shops featuring lacy pink underwear including 'trainer bras'.

Yet should the feminist fightback against what Peggy Orenstein, in Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture, terms 'the princess industrial complex', be directed toward labelling pink as powerless and pernicious?

Former X-Files star Gillian Anderson stands as another tribute to 'pink power'. As a child she lived for some time in London's Haringey and Crouch End. Returning to the US meant taking an un-American accent with her. Of pre-adolescent and teenage life in Michigan, she says: 'I hadn't taken into account how alien American culture would be and how my Britishness would set me apart … ' London's Sunday Times reports that Anderson was 'teased about her accent', becoming a 'rebel with an outrageous hairstyle …' And what colour was the hair? Anderson '[was] "this girl with combat boots and hair dyed pink …"' No kowtowing to pink as 'pretty, passive and obsessed with shopping, fashion and makeup'.

Indeed, Gillian Anderson has waged a number of battles – in addition to the pink hair. Her instructions for the role of X-Files' Scully were not to star alongside David Duchovny's Mulder at all: she should walk several paces to the rear while taking a wage-packet at half the sum paid to him. Anderson resisted – and won.

The original association of pink with power and strength is not misplaced. Girl babies survive at far higher rates. . Girl babies survive at far higher rates than do boy babies. Combined research from Stanford, Yale and Brown medical schools shows girls born preterm do better than boys, with premature birth creating 'greater problems' and producing more lasting brain effects in boys. Far from being 'passive', 'submissive', flaccid, inert or any of those other antonyms decrying pink, girl babies and girl children have strengths which may be overlooked. This does not mean these strengths are not there.

'Tomboy' exists because girls climb trees, swing from monkey-bars, play rough and tumble gam*es including softball, basketball and hockey. Far from being 'sissy', skippy or skip-the-rope requires coordination, agility and muscle power. Even activities placed firmly into the domain of the 'weak' by those who abjure the tutu, dance is far from lacking strength and power. The ability to move to music is recognised, too, as a potent factor in gaining psychological equilibrium and sense of self, both vital to well-being.

So are affirmations of pink as a power signifier anti-feminist? Do those affirming pink's power undercut girls and women's ability to grow-up as humanbeings of strength and fortitude? Is there a generational divide here, as asserted in the controversy surrounding the 'Slut Walk' movement that engaged women in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and elsewhere?

The controversy over 'slut' was not that those demurring or objecting did not support the original marchers in Canada, where a police officer unwisely asserted that rape was a caused by women 'dressing like sluts'. Clearly, he was wrong. Rape is a consequence of male assertion of 'right' over the woman who says no or who does not say yes. Rather, the controversy related to whether 'slut' could be 'reclaimed' as a word affirming women and womanhood.