Defending the Color Pink: You Can Love it and Still Be a Smart Consumer!
I’m so tired of bloggers complaining about companies selling pink products to trick women into buying poorly made gadgets they don’t want. Guess what? I love Pink, I’m a smart consumer and I’m not alone!
I have a brand spankin’ new pink laptop from Dell. Did Dell trick me into buying a pink laptop that is really a piece of crap? No. I researched my options hardcore. I considered Macs, HPs, Lenovos, Gateways, and non-Pink Dells. I made an Excel spreadsheet to compare the memory, hard drives, and other features of each one (most of which are customizable anyway).
I chose the Dell because it was the best in the market for my price range. I made sure it had 2GB of memory to handle Vista. The thing is totally awesome and even Mac people are impressed with it. I had 8 color options. Not just pink. I went with Pink because I love it.
I did, however, struggle with choosing the color. I was worried that people wouldn’t take me seriously with a pink laptop. But that’s not true. People will only disrespect me if I allow them to. And they will not benefit from my creative strategies if I’m constantly hiding my imaginative personality from plain view.
I have a pink Motorola Razr. This has been a hot seller for Motorola. My friend Susan has one. New Bold employee Laura has one. None of us are stupid enough to think that the phone itself equals good mobile service. We each have to decide which company we want to use our pink phones on. But we can be smart consumers who love pink.
I have a pink iPod mini. Yeah, I’m old school. I won’t be for long, because technically the iPod belongs to my daughter and my father-in-law, who bought the gadget for her, is upset I’m using it (despite the fact that it spent months on the floor). So, I’m giving it back and will be using my husband’s black video iPod (he hardly uses it). I’m kind of disappointed though. Because I would rather it be pink. Or even green. Or blue. Or something. But preferably pink.
I started loving pink in February 2003. That was when I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Prior to that, my wardrobe was made of mostly dull colors like dark blue, grey, and black. I started incorporating pink because I was becoming drawn to colors to cheer me up. Now, I have a very colorful wardrobe full of pinks and greens and lavenders.
Naysayers of pink marketing (often disguised as “thought leaders“) are in the minority. Just 30% of women dislike pink products. You’ll find data from a survey that only 9% of women say a product has to have a feminine touch. But that says nothing about whether women have a preference - just if they would require a product to be feminine in order to purchase it. Additionally, not all pink products are the same. Some are sleek and others are outright ugly. And I can’t see myself ever driving a pink car.
Women need to stop acting like pink products are patronizing. That’s only true if women are prevented from buying non-pink products. But women are free to buy black, silver, green, blue, red, and yellow products.
It really all comes down to preference. But a personal dislike for pink does not equal companies trying to rip off women just because a product is pink. Just admit you have a color preference and move on!
A word on Pink Products for Breast Cancer.
I don’t generally buy pink products for breast cancer. But if you do, please do your research. Understand where your money is going. A monetary donation will go much further than buying a gadget. And even then, you need to research the organization you’re donating to. Some are more political than research, for example.
P.S. Teal and Purple are thyroid cancer colors. Thyroid cancer awareness month was in September. Next time you see your doctor, be sure to ask him or her to conduct a “neck check” for thyroid nodules.
Dustin wrote:
You linked to my post about books marketed to girls with pink covers, as an example of bloggers complaining about pink being used to market gadgets to women. I don’t think the cases are all that similar — most books do not come in several colors for readers to choose the one that best matches their personal taste. I admit, I do have a problem with the use of pink as a marker for to say “this is for ladies” but when there’s a demand for that, fair enough. With books its different — studies show girld *don’t* have a preference, but **boys** do — putting a pink cover on a book doesn’t make it “for girls” it makes it “not for boys”, and given that the content of most books for young readers could appeal equally to both genders, the effect is worsening the aleady large reading gap between boys and girls.
Posted on 03-Oct-07 at 8:25 am | Permalink
Nathania Johnson wrote:
Actually, a recent study showed that girls do have a natural, perhaps genetic, affinity for pink.
I’m the mom to two kids, a nine year old girl and a ten year old boy. But my children are not biologically mine. They lived with their father and grandfather before I came along. But my little girl loves pink (despite the fact that her bio mom was out of the picture long ago). In fact, I keep trying to get her to choose purple or green just to mix it up a bit - but she just loves pink!
When it comes to books, it’s really the content that drives interest, not color. If you took the lavender color off the books about fairies that my girl likes to read, my son still would not be interested. He wants to read about Transformers, Spiderman, dogs, and boys his age.
A great example is the books by Beverly Cleary. The Ramona books are not in pink, but my son won’t read them. There’s even a Ramona book in yellow - his favorite color, but he won’t even look at it. But he loved Cleary books about Henry Huggins and his dog! And at least one of those books has a fair amount of pink on the cover!
Our job as parents is to teach our kids what is important in products - the content of the book is certainly more important than the color of the cover. It’s also our job as parents to teach our kids to look past marketing gimmicks. I would never let my girl buy something pink that was poor quality, for example.
Posted on 03-Oct-07 at 9:31 am | Permalink
Dustin wrote:
Actually, I’m not buying the research methodology behind that study, and it certainly doesn’t accord well with history. Pink only became a girl’s color in the last 50 years or so; before WWII, pink was actually considered a BOY’S color (it’s light red, after all, and red is the color of passion, anger, violence, blood, aggression, etc. — hardly feminine). But even if I bought it, it’s a tiny, tiny difference (it was like a 1% difference) that the media has made into a huge one.
On books, there’s two things: 1) Publishers are covering not just books that directly appeal to girls but books across the board in pink, because girls read far more than boys (in the US and UK, something like 80% of young reader books go to girls!). So there’s a problem in general of getting boys to read. 2) We as parents, educators, and otherwise involved adults have to take some responsibility for the limitation of boys’ tastes. There’s no natural, genetic basis to prefer Transformers! The “pinking” of book covers is only a part of this, since it effectively shuts boys out from books that they might otherwise be interested in if only the covers weren’t pink or purple. But part of it too is the social training that boys get that says that they cannot identify, for instance, with the trials and tribulations of a female protagonist.
Like you said, the content of books is more important than their covers — but the content of our *kids* also plays a role in this, and it’s parents, teachers, and others who teach boys how to respond to the content of books.
Posted on 03-Oct-07 at 9:53 am | Permalink
Nathania Johnson wrote:
We’ll probably just have to agree to disagree on this one. But when I walk into Barnes and Noble or Borders or even the book section at Walmart, I don’t see waves of pink. Perhaps we shop at different bookstores.
There’s not a genetic basis for Transformers, I never stated that. Our whole family loves Transformers, but my son is the biggest fan. It’s because he loves robots, engineering, math and constructing complex things. He has genius level capabilities in those areas and that’s what prevents him from being interested in other things - not the color of a book cover.
Posted on 03-Oct-07 at 10:46 am | Permalink
WarriorBlog wrote:
Thats good to do research
Yuck pink! I prefer black or blue and love using laptop espspecially for gaming 
Posted on 03-Oct-07 at 11:36 am | Permalink
Nathania Johnson wrote:
Yeah, when it comes to gaming, I’m not sure pink fits as well! I don’t think the Sony PlayStation in pink is attractive, for example.
Posted on 03-Oct-07 at 11:56 am | Permalink
Girly gadgets » Alison Driscoll wrote:
[…] may call it a cheap marketing trick (what other kind is there?); others think it dumbs down or de-professionalizes the industry or […]
Posted on 21-Nov-07 at 2:20 pm | Permalink
Alice wrote:
I use a PINK version of Google called Find It Girlfriend. I love it!
Posted on 20-Feb-08 at 11:21 pm | Permalink