by Wendy Vardaman

     About this time the color “pink” (usually, a pale mixture of white and red, sometimes a brighter variant which might or might not include small amounts of blue) was declared detrimental to the advancement of women’s interests. Factories that produced stickers widely distributed to young females by so-called health professionals as well as those that made clothing both for the same females and for their disfigured dolls either voluntarily eliminated pink or were boycotted, picketed, even violently attacked by well-organized groups of professional mothers who refused to allow their daughters’ intellectual and career development to be stunted by further exposure to a detrimental, even toxic substance. Here is the testimony of one of the notorious Mattel 7, exonerated of criminal culpability during their trial:

Is it a coincidence that a generation of women exposed to pink has wasted its talent and time at home raising children? The color, as further neurological research will surely bear out, has a debilitating effect on the brain center responsible for competition or the drive to succeed. Note the temporal correlation of the house husband with a brief upsurge of pink in male fashion. Coincidence? I think not. And some may see it as conspiratorial, but note also the disappearance, the voluntary removal of pink from men’s clothing as soon as this correlation was discovered. Women simply want equal treatment and consideration. Would our government officials not, were pink a chemical, rather than a color, rush to regulate its use?

After their acquittal, the FDA did declare itself to have jurisdiction over color, eventually banning pink altogether. A similar movement to criminalize purple failed, due to the lobbying efforts of LGBTQ groups who argued persuasively that purple was clinically relatable to sexuality. Various court cases, notably, Salmon Fishers v. the State of Alaska and Rose Growers v. the U.S. have had to define the meaning of “pink” over the years, leading some legal scholars to suggest that color regulation is inherently too imprecise to practice, although one Supreme Court Justice quipped in response to this spurious argument, “I know pink when I see it.”