The Unapologetic Male by Eghoghon Ifidon

“Don’t wear pink, they are for girls,” that’s a rule mama never failed to tell. That wasn’t all, she apparently had zero clue of how this rule came to be. In the Country where he lives, he knew people would if he was caught wearing pink, but girls never seemed to have any issues with blue.

The girls would laugh, the boys would snare at this male who chose to be associated which a colour specially coined for girls. Does this sound familiar?

Welcome to the strict cultural world where fashion chooses to break the norm and ideologies of the majority.

In a heartbeat, the cool toned blue is thrown at the male infant in any African home, while the tender pink is given to the female child. This used to be a global thing, but while other countries accepted colours as just a fashion statement, Africans chose to use it as a gender symbol.

These gender norms have unfortunately given a restriction in the expression of personality. It’s a culture so rigid one can’t express how he truly feels. Your sexual orientation should have nothing to do with appreciating the colours of nature, but alas it does.

It has become a taboo for a man to wear a colour considered a girl’s, whereas a woman choosing blue as a favourite colour is taken with scepticism with questions raised like – is she feminine enough?

But fashion has taken a positive twist, and given men the right to wear the colours they like. Splash on some pink and it becomes a BOLD statement. Getting to this point was no walk in the park. It took years of naysayers getting ignored to build a wall over the fashion horror called scepticism.

Today, women are associated with this colour – pink. However, do you know pink used to be a boy’s colour, while blue was a girl’s?

Jo B. Paoletti, a professor at the University of Maryland and author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America, revealed that there was once a time well before pink and blue were used to distinguish between boys and girls at all.

Writer and colour expert Gavin Evans in an interview with Business Insider explained that it’s generally believed that blue was associated with the Virgin Mary, hence its more feminine connotations, while pink was linked to red, which was seen as a strong and masculine colour.

Pink does stand between red and white, and is a softer tone of red but a bolder tone of white. It’s a blend of pureness and boldness, and absolutely perfect for the masculine gender.

“Don’t wear pink, they are for girls,” mama used to say. Mama knows best, but sometimes she needs to get schooled and the new rules of fashion.