The Power of Pink

Pink is a mere color and yet it has the ability to inspire and transform.

The color pink was one of my first loves and I still believe in its transformational powers. For those of you who went to ballet as a child, I suspect you remember your pink tutu. For me, that tutu was a source of incredible power — it transformed me into a superpower, an angel and a princess. I became the unchallenged star of my dreams. I would have slept in my tutu (alas, mom stepped in there). When Dr. Suess asked me for my favorite color in All About Me, well, no surprise there ….

Pink still makes me smile. When I wear it, I feel my most beautiful, my most feminine. When pink flowers grace my hallway, I take a moment when I get home simply to appreciate them. After years of believing my bedroom should be gender neutral (just in case…), I bought a pink silk comforter and luxuriate in it every night. And I suspected any nocturnal visitor would have other priorities. (My single days, of course).

And yet pink has an incredibly bad reputation at work. It is silly, girly, just not serious enough. Pink is not a color for the boardroom. It is as if our only association with pink is Barbie before “Working Barbie.” Wearing pink is apparently so symbolic and so meaningful that Hillary Clinton’s 1994 press conference regarding Whitewater and other controversial topics was deemed “The Pink Press Conference.” Um, really???

I question why pink is so unacceptable, so antithetical to being considered a serious and committed member of the workplace. My brain works just as well when I am wearing pink; in fact, it probably works better since I feel more confident when I like how I look. If others choose to see it as a sign of frivolity, then I choose to see an opportunity — as an attorney, I embrace my opponents underestimating me.

Maybe the color you love isn’t pink. Maybe it really is black, or maybe its baby blue. But whatever it is, you should wear it. You should have a pair of PJs, a slinky dress, a pair of high heels and, yes, a suit in your favorite color. And if that color is associated with femininity, so what? All the statistics show that companies that have a greater percentage of women on their Boards of Directors perform better. Clearly there is something in the feminine that is a winning proposition.

There is a quote that ‘little girls with dreams become women with vision.” That pink tutu was the source of my little girl dreams and pink remains very much part of my vision as a woman.

As a final note, I want to mention that men who confidently wear pink are very, very sexy. Their comfort, in my view, means they are confident in all of their masculine parts and masculine ways.

The Power of Pink, painting by Paula Crane.