Pink is powerful

Unlike 'mistress', 'spinster', 'loose woman' and 'pink', 'slut' has never had a positive meaning, nor positive connotations for women. Once, a mistress was a woman of power in the household, a woman holding the larder and cellar keys, who ordered household operations, wielding strength through management and administration: no mean skill there. Once, a spinster span – earning her own income and preserving her independence. Spinsters led challenges to the 'right' of men to auction their wives in the marketplace, often swooping down to spirit the woman away. Loose women had agency and autonomy – they walked free and independent, the property of no man. Pink is a word of power. In the past, this was recognised. No reason for not doing so now.

'Slut' has ever meant 'slattern' – a dirty, sloppy, smelly and slovenly woman. Do we wish to 'reclaim' that having no redeeming feature, applied against women by those having no capacity for recognising, or acknowledging, women's strength, power, autonomy and agency – in general or in sexual terms?

PinkStinks has supporters of all ages. Its ingenious inventors are sisters of 40, operating through social networks with volunteers and some 5000 FaceBook friends and half that number of Twitter followers. The Slut Marches did not comprise young or younger women alone. Nor did the divide fall on one or other side of generational lines.

PinkStinks' concern is understandable. Yet will it advance young girls' perception of themselves to be told their wish for pink is an indicator of a lack of identification with power and self-worth? Rather than put down pink – and girls with it, let's acknowledge it as a colour of strength. Rather than putdowns in the playground, let's encourage a culture affirming girls and women as indomitable. After all, when crossing a busy road like William Street in the heart of Melbourne's legal industry, cars halt invariably in two circumstances alone: when confronted by black-gowned and white-bewigged barristers dashing and dodging through the traffic, or the woman wearing pink.

No reason why a woman cannot be both – a professional woman garbed in the black of her calling, and one who in other circumstances wears pink. Both are entitled, and right, to recognise pink is powerful.