Not Like Other Girls

Why I ran away from pink all my life

my 21st birthday

Nothing unsettled me more at seven years old than being asked my favorite color. What was an easy question for most kids made me freeze in fear. Instead of sticking with a color like my classmates, who were sure of themselves, I’d change my response by shifting between the primaries: blue, red, yellow, and sometimes green. But not pink, never pink. Even when in the deepest part of my being, I knew that pink was my favorite color, I wouldn’t be caught dead admitting that fact. Looking back, it wasn’t just about the color—it was about something much bigger.

As a young girl, I was told that femininity is pink and masculinity is blue. For the first few years of my life, I celebrated that belief. But as I got older, I did my best to separate myself from the color, believing that to be pink is to be feminine, and to be feminine is neither cool nor interesting.

My dedication to dismissing pink as my favorite color followed me throughout high school and college. In high school especially, I found myself constantly fighting my femininity. As a blonde girl with blue eyes, I was on the receiving end of many dumb blonde jokes. I worried that being a blonde who declared pink her favorite color would only play into the stereotype I was trying to avoid. So, I became the blonde girl whose favorite color was green, who liked sports, and who knew that a touchdown is six points. And even then, I still couldn’t manage what everyone thought of me.

The bottom line was that I wanted to be seen as smart and interesting—and, more importantly, I wanted the boys to see me that way. I knew I was those things, but I felt the need to prove it.

It’s hard to be your true self at that age when you're scrutinized for every little thing—your hair, makeup, clothes, and body—really everything about you is on the chopping block. And the boys have all the say. Somewhere along the way, we are taught that the boys are the true deciders of who is cool and uncool, who is pretty, and who is not. In high school, we played fictional versions of ourselves to please them—only afterward did we become our true selves. And part of my performance was denying pink, the color I loved but feared embracing.

I revert to Amy Dunne’s iconic “cool girl” monologue in Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl, where she describes a woman who is effortlessly desirable to men but never truly herself. A “Cool Girl” is simultaneously a “hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot.”

She explains that, to men, these girls aren’t just an ideal—they’re real. Flynn says that a “Cool Girl” is a girl who lives for anyone but herself. “They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be,” she writes. This isn’t just a fictional archetype—it’s an expectation women internalize, often without realizing it.

Girls and women reinforce this notion, too, even when they don’t mean to—it manifests in real life and media. I remember one episode of The Office where Pam scoffs at Jim’s new girlfriend, Katie, played by Amy Adams, for choosing Legally Blonde as one of the movies she’d bring if stranded on a desert island.

That was probably the most uncool thing Pam did in the entire series. Her scoff at Katie’s love for Legally Blonde wasn’t just casual teasing—it reflected how even women can reinforce the idea that femininity is frivolous. I saw that moment, and I internalized it. I learned that to be taken seriously, I had to prove I was not like Katie, not like Elle Woods, not like the girl who loved pink.

In the Barbie movie, Margot Robbie, who plays Barbie, proudly wears all-pink clothes, drives a pink car, and lives in a pink house. However, when she enters the real world, she’s suddenly uncomfortable in her bright pink outfit because it makes her stand out in a world that values masculinity over femininity. Now, she must become someone other than herself to remain.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention America Ferrera’s Barbie monologue, in which she so eloquently proclaims, “It is literally impossible to be a woman.” She then lays out all the impossible standards women must adhere to be liked—which are never-ending. “I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don't even know.”

After I graduated high school, I stopped letting boys decide how I should act. This shift led me to self-acceptance, but even then, I was skeptical about revealing my favorite color. One of the first things I asked my current boyfriend almost seven years ago when we started going out was what his favorite color was. He didn’t even have to think before blurting out “pink.” I laughed. I’ve never met a boy who told me their favorite color was pink. I loved him for that and told him my favorite color was green. It was instinct—old habits die hard. More recently, I admitted to him that my favorite color was pink. “I know,” he said.

Pink wasn’t always seen as feminine—it just happened over time. In an article, Smithsonian Magazine discusses the evolution of pink as a feminine color. They highlight a 1918 article by the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department that assigned pink to boys and blue to girls: “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls,” the article read. “The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”

Somewhere along the way, the roles reversed, and now it’s set in stone: girls are pink, and boys are blue. But for some reason, the connotations reversed too: pink is now dainty, whereas blue is strong. But that does not mean the connotation must reign true. If pink used to be considered a “strong” and “decided” color for boys, then who is to say it can’t also be for girls?

For 24 years, I hesitated to say my favorite color was pink. But the truth is, pink is bold. It’s confident. It’s certain. There’s power in liking what you like without shame. And nothing feels more freeing than finally claiming it.

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Lately, my four-year-old niece Scarlett has been bringing up the pink cowboy boots she wants. She’s adamant that they must be pink, so I asked her why.

“Because pink is cool!!!” she declared, stomping in the mud wearing a pink raincoat with her hair undone.

“Yes, it is,” I agreed.

-Tiana