Why Pink Stinks

Let me start off by saying that I don't personally have a problem with the color pink (not like sea green which I think is a horrible miserable color) - I love pink roses and pink cheeks and a tall glass of pink lemonade.  I own pink skirts, shirts and few pink unmentionables.  I think that pink is a delightful addition to my box of crayons.

So what is my problem with pink?  As I said, I love pink as a PART of my crayon box but I get very frustrated with the corporate merchandisers/powers that be who apparently believe that it is the ONLY color that needs to be in my daughter's.

Last week I took both Quinn and Greyson to the sports store to get them fitted for all their soccer gear.  One side of the soccer aisle had the boys shoes, shin guards and socks...they had red, blue, green and black.  The other side had the girls' paraphernalia....all pink.  Oh, I could choose between light pink and dark pink but it was pink nonetheless.  Why is it that boys seem to get this rainbow of colors to choose from and in most instances my daughter's only choice is pink and occasionally purple?  I don't think that girls are genetically made up to prefer only one color.  And pink isn't the only feminine color out there either. Pretty much any color that shows up on an Easter Egg is pretty girlie in my humble opinion. When given a rainbow of options my daughter chooses a rainbow of colors.  She chose a gorgeous eggplant color for her formal night dress for the cruise and she recently chose purple for her new bike.  And I have a feeling that if the soccer gear had come in other colors we might have seen some yellow shin guards paired with a delightful soft green sock (the whole color matching concept still eludes her!).

Then later in the week we went to the dentist where the hygienist happily offered Greyson a choice of toothbrushes for his visit.  Quinn?  She just dropped a pink one in her bag without even considering she might prefer another color. 

Now to be honest I don't know exactly which came first (the whole chicken and the egg dilemma).  I don't know whether it was higher sales of pink which drove retailers to discard all the other options or the retailers paring down selection forcing everyone into pink and therefore forcing pink to be the end-all-be-all of girl colors.  I don't know and frankly don't really care.  All I want is for my daughter to have a choice and at the end of the day if everything she chooses is pink well at least she had the option.