I think nowadays we can’t find a color that is more popular than pink. When we imagine it a lot of associations come to mind, for example, love, Barbie, Valentine’s Day, girls, fairies, beauty. But why do we make it more special than others?
Let’s touch the history of this famous color. The first use of the word “pink” is dated back to 17th century, this word described the flowers of pinks, flowering plants in the genus Dianthus. Pink itself is a combination of red and white. Other tints of pink may be combinations of rose and white, magenta and white, or orange and white.
It can seem strange but in 17th century the word “pink” was also applied to describe a greenish or yellowish color. Thomas Jenner's A Book of Drawing, Limning, Washing (1652) categorizes "Pink & blue bice" amongst the greens , and specifies several admixtures of greenish colors made with pink In William Salmon's Polygraphice (1673), "Pink yellow" is mentioned amongst the chief yellow pigments.
Usually nowadays pink color is associated with women but in the beginning of 20th century it was not so. Pink is a combination of red and white and at that time red was considered more masculine and appropriate for boys that’s why it was associated with a strong sex while blue was considered appropriate for girls because it was the more delicate and dainty color, or related to the Virgin Mary. Since the 1940s, the societal norm apparently inverted so that pink became appropriate for girls and blue appropriate for boys, a practice that has continued into the 21st century.
In the recent history during the Second World War pink color was associated with homosexuality. For example, at that time the Nazi forced Jewish people to wear a yellow star of David under Nazi rule, and Roma people were forced to wear a black triangle, men imprisoned on accusations of homosexuality or same-sex sexual activity were forced to wear a pink triangle.
For example, there are also some other curiosities about this color. I found that the expression “Seeing pink elephants” is a euphemism for hallucinations caused by delirium tremens. The concept was used in the Disney's animated film Dumbo when the title character accidentally becomes drunk and sees a parade of pink elephants. Have you seen pink elephants? If not yet you have your whole life ahead!
Also some information about pink in movies. In Japan the color cherry blossom pink is associated with “the passage in the body of a woman between the outer sex organs and the womb” (the explanation from The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, if you don’t have a clue what it is, look up in there)) and therefore, in Japan, softcore pornographic films were called pink movies. Now this expression is not used because the name “Adult films” is more popular.
If we take information about countries, in Thailand, for example, pink is associated with Tuesday on the Thai solar calendar. Anyone may wear pink on Tuesdays, and anyone born on a Tuesday may adopt pink as their color.
Pink color also is used in education (maybe the purpose is to male it more interesting and not so boring). In fact, in the French academic dress system , the five traditional fields of study (Arts, Science, Medicine, Law and Divinity) are each symbolized by a distinctive color, which appears in the academic dress of the people who graduated in this field. Redcurrant, an extremely red shade of pink, is the distinctive color for Medicine (and other health-related fields) and this is not surprise that this color has been chosen to manifest breast cancer awareness. Another curios event happened in the USA on 6 September 2007. At the Miraloma Elementary School in San Francisco, California , the principal, Ron Machado, got a pink Mohawk haircut, as he had agreed to do if the students raised the school’s Academic Performance Index by at least 55 points. They raised it by 67 points. Pink works wonders!
If we touch human psychology, we also can find a lot of interesting things. First of all, pink, of course, is usually associated with love and romance. But it is not all what can it do to people. Pink is thought to have a calming effect. One shade known as "drunk-tank pink" is sometimes used in prisons to calm inmates. Sports teams sometimes paint the opposing teams locker room pink to keep the players passive and less energetic. “Paint the town pink” and have no problems!
Also it is very interesting to know what pink means in parapsychology. It has been asserted that people with pink auras are those who strongly desire relationships. Have you checked yours?
Now we are taking a language focus. For example. “in the pink” is an English idiomatic expression for in good condition or in good health (check the Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary if you don’t believe me). Then in Spanish, “a novela rosa” ("pink novel") is a sentimental novel marketed to women.
Though pink is a very intensive color it exists in nature. The pink iguana is an iguana that was first identified in 1986 and first recognized as a distinct species in 2009. Most flamingo species are pink in color due to pink pigments in their diet.
This color we even can find in sonic theory. There is a tem in it the so-called “pink sound” that means 1/f noise, is a signal or process with a frequency spectrum such that the power spectral density is proportional to the reciprocal of the frequency. Now I believe pink is a universal color – we can see it and even hear it!
Pink color is also used in newspapers to define a financial section. This tradition is dated back to 1893 when the London Financial Times newspaper used a distinctive salmon pink color for its newsprint, mainly as a way to distinguish itself from competitors. In other countries, the salmon press identifies economic newspapers or economics sections in "white" newspapers. Pink is money!
What about politics, fancy that, it is also used! Pink is sometimes used in a derogatory way to describe a person with mild communist or socialist beliefs (see Pinko) and in maps of political parties in Portugal, pink is used to represent the Socialist Party. If we take my favorite the Oxford Dictionary we can find that the expression “to be pink” has a disapproving connotation in informal speech that means that a person has or show slightly left-wing political affiliations.
Pink is also used in the informal speech in the USA in the field of employment. The expression “pink slip” means a letter given to somebody to say that they must leave their job (in simple words – fired).
Pink is also a discriminative color! “Pink collar” is the expression connected with low-paid jobs done mainly by women, for example in offices and restaurants! Well, the relief is in that “pink collars” hasn’t gone far from “blue collars” that do heavy work in industry or “white collars” who spend day and nights working in offices.
Of course, if pink color has been used in so many fields, it can’t skip the religion. Pink is the color most associated with Indian spiritual leader Meher Baba, who often wore pink coats to please his closest female follower, Mehera Irani, and today pink remains an important color, symbolizing love, to Baba's followers. For me it was also a great surprise that there is also parodies religions. The Invisible Pink Unicorn is the goddess of a parody religion, a rhetorical tool intended to satirize the contradictory properties often attributed to deities (please, if you know what parody religions are, write on forum, really I have no idea).
If we take buildings and transportation we can also find a lot of pink. For example the famous Pink House is the residence of the President of Argentina. In the USA the Chicago Transit Authority recently debuted the Pink Line light rail service. The Pink Line is a proposed subway through the city of West Hollywood (Hollywood is a fabric of dreams, let’s look at the world through the pink glasses or just go down to the underground). In England In the London Underground system, Hammersmith & City line running from Hammersmith to Barking is assigned the color pink on the tube map. Pink is loved everywhere in the world and it doesn’t matter where you live - in sunny Southern countries or Misty Albion.
And finally, computers! If you are writing your site in HTML you can do it in pink color using the combination of RGB (255, 192, 203). Paint your world in pink and make your life happier!!!
As we can see this color has never decreased in popularity throughout the centuries of its existence and this popularity is growing every time. It is very pleasant to look at the world in the prism of pink color (please, take off the glasses when you are sleeping, it could be dangerous). Be in the Pink!!!
The final Curios © phrase:
“It’s all pink on the inside”
(Unknown)
