IN A bookshop in Biggar, when my younger son was about four-and-a-half and about to start school, a slightly older boy got chatting to him over a shared love of Octonauts picture books. (The Octonauts, for the unaware, are little undersea adventurers who rescue sick marine animals - a very good CBeebies creation.)
This older child asked my boy what his favourite colour was and on receiving the answer, which was pink, dispensed some wise advice.
“It’s really fine to like pink, but when you go to school, you might have to not SAY you like it,” he said, solemnly. “Some people – not me, but SOME PEOPLE – think pink is just a colour for girls.”
So young, and so tuned in, already, to the nonsense of gender stereotyping.
It’s true, pink has had, and maybe always will have, a particular reputation, associated with cuteness and unicorns and bubblegum-scented princesses.
Thanks to some skilful marketing, pink-for-girls and blue-for-boys has persisted, even down to the horrific current trend for ‘gender-reveal’ parties, at which parents-to-be set free balloons of either colour in front of friends and family to let them know the sex of the baby they are having.
But over the last quarter of a century, pink has also become associated with breast cancer. Since cosmetics giant Estee Lauder launched the pink ribbon in 1992, to help galvanise a global awareness and fundraising movement, it has become the symbol of people fighting the disease and the charities supporting them.
Now a charity founder has spoken out in favour of banning it because, she says “there is nothing pink and fluffy about breast cancer.”
Audrey Birt, who set up Breakthrough Breast Cancer in Scotland, has survived the illness four times.
She is right – as anyone who has been through it knows, there is absolutely nothing pretty about the way this disease attacks your body, your soul, your family and your life.
But I would respectfully suggest that a symbol as recognisable as the pink ribbon, which has helped to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds for research, and put this type of cancer (in awareness terms) leaps and bounds ahead of the rest, should not be dismissed simply because it is pink.
At the start of the pink ribbon campaign, breast cancer was still very much a taboo topic so if you were going through it, you had little to go on – there was hardly any sharing of experience.
The pink ribbon has helped to change that, so why not allow it to change perceptions of pink too?
I don’t believe it was ever intended to diminish the horror of a breast cancer diagnosis. Far from being a negative, surely THIS pink is positive?
This pink means power and, for many, hope.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here