Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Pretty in Pink











I stumbled across this article the other day, from the San Fransisco Chronicle. It perfectly sums up why I still love pink so much, and why it will always be one of my favourite colours.

"The shyest color and the boldest, pink has soul.

It's the color of the underside of a twilight cloud. A puff of cotton candy at a summer fair. The inside of a seashell. A baby's ear. The nose of a kitten.

The rose of a shy admirer. The blush of a flirt.

So much more than merely a pale version of red, the color pink can be innocent or it can be sleazy, cheap as a street-bought carnation, precious as a damask rose. Both colors denote love, but while red is direct, hot and passionate, pink is flirtatious and romantic.

Pink is charming.

Artists will tell you that pink is one of the hardest colors to get right. Just a touch too much one way or another, and pink is nauseating where it might be soothing, artificial where it might be as natural as the dawn......

Somewhere back in time, pink became the universal color of girls, the hue of the feminine, the antithesis of blue. This led to the term "pink-collar," pertaining to jobs "traditionally" held by women.

The sweet and playful side of pink makes it a signifier of fun and kid stuff. Bubble gum and strawberry milk shakes. Pink lemonade. Hello Kitty. Half the contents of a box of Good and Plenty.

Grown-ups learned to have fun with pink, too, in the form of sweet cocktails like Cosmopolitans or sloe gin fizzes, Pink Squirrel and Pink Ladies (gin, grenadine and egg white, shaken and strained before serving), pink champagne and rose wine.

Of course, too many of any of the above will have you seeing pink elephants, the traditional hallucinations of inebriates, whatever the color of their drink of choice.

Pink can be an adult color, with its sexual connotations, whispering of the secret places of both a man and a woman.

In the language of flowers, pink roses mean perfect happiness, "please believe me," joy, grace and poetic romance, whereas a pink carnation means "I'll never forget you." - Joe Brown

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