Why the colour PINK?
Why is it called The Pink Studio?
This is the question I’ve been asked by almost everyone who has come through the studio in the past year, so I wanted to share some of the thought I put into our name.
Pink is a bit of a risky colour when it comes to business. People tend to have strong feelings about the colour pink and not everyone is a fan. Some have suggested it is not a feminist choice for the studio.
The short answer, usually given in the studio when someone asks during their initial tour, is to gesture toward the giant decal above our doors. Written there is the dictionary definition of the phrase “in the pink”. The first known use of this phrase was by William Shakespeare in 1597. In The Pink refers to being in the best possible health.
When someone has colour in their cheeks (pink!) it is generally taken as a sign of being healthy and strong. Example: “Natalie has been quite ill but now she’s back in the pink!”
The more in depth answer has a lot to do with feminism, the “over-gendering” of many things (including colours) these days, and happiness!
For me, pink is a powerful colour and it makes a statement. I want to challenge the idea that the statement it makes is one of weakness or timidness. Pink is still regarded as a feminine colour and anything feminine is still seen, by both men and women, as holding a lower status. We applaud young girls who learn to code, love Spiderman and playing baseball. We don’t celebrate as much when young men want to wear lace, do ballet and play with Barbies.
I don’t believe pushing girls to be more like boys is the answer to gender equality. Instead of making masculine tendencies the ideal standard, shouldn’t we hold the “girly” qualities to the same high regard?
If you are someone who rolls their eyes at the thought of pink ask yourself where that internal bias might come from. It is totally valid. For many of us we grew up with the colour being forced on us as children or used as a marketing tool to make sure we knew which products were for women. Ugh. Pink was always associated with gentleness and girliness and then somewhere along the way we stopped that narrative.
Women got wise to the fact that you can’t just put pink packaging on a product and increase the price to make us feel “special”. No, that made us feel dumb. And many of us rebelled against pink.
As a young woman at this time, I started to see more female identifying people in positions of power and it was exciting. But I was told, like many young women, in order to be successful you need to tone down anything super feminine because you would not be taken seriously if you were wearing a lot of makeup at work or, heaven forbid, the colour pink! So many of us shunned this colour in order to be taken seriously and seen as strong.
In the past few years, PINK has made an interesting political comeback. We saw it with the thousands of bright pink pussy hats that became a movement after the election in 2016. We also got to know the powerhouse congresswoman who makes red lipstick and hoop earrings look like they belong in politics.
(hello AOC!)
You may have even heard of the Gulabi Gang in the news last year.
“The Gulabi Gang in Uttar Pradesh, is a group of women fighting for women empowerment while being clad in pink. They break the stereotypes of being weak and meek, by fighting against important issues like domestic violence, child labour, child marriages, dowry demands etc, while being dressed in a colour that has long been negatively appropriated.” -quote from The Colour Pink: The Colour of our Battlefields
Reclaiming the colour pink has been a marker of modern day feminism and something that I was very intentional about as an entrepreneur when creating our branding. I chose our particular shade of pink for the studio because hot pink makes me feel sassy and energetic. Everything I created about this studio was very deliberate. Shoutout to my business partner/brother Grant, who trusts me a lot and gives me total creative freedom.
It has also been interesting to see how often people assume the studio is women’s only. Some have asked “Well aren’t you afraid you are off putting to men with all this pink?”. Ummmmmm…..how do I say this nicely?
Not even a little bit. Haha.
But seriously, this was also a deliberate choice because I wanted men to know they are always welcome here. However, I only want men who feel comfortable in a very femme positive space in the classes anyways. Maintaining an environment where the members feel comfortable, welcomed and supported will always be very important to me.
So that’s my story! I tried to explain myself as best I could. I’m not a perfect feminist. I also don’t judge anyone for how they live their truth and express their own feminism. This is how I’ve chosen to express mine. By creating joy in this little pink corner of the world.
Natalie
xo