Despite the 90s nostalgia hype that continues to devastate wardrobes worldwide, today we take the time to take up the cudgels on behalf of a more modern development. Besides the current baggie pants and active wear fetish, another trend has emerged in the last months – a trend that would have been decried as “unmanly,” had it not been for a shift in perception when it comes to allegedly gender-specific colors.
You see, you don’t have to read Judith Butler to acknowledge that colors, especially pink and azure, are used to market products to female and male customers respectively. Pink is for girls, blue is for boys, right?. There are pink and blue razors, pink and blue pencils, even pink and blue yoghurts. It’s easy to see why companies are eager to label their products in such a way: when you’re having two variations of essentially the same commodity, you can target two separate focus groups in one sweep.
However, assigning pink for girls and blue for boys is an inherently arbitrary choice: there’s nothing about pink that would make it a girls-only color, ditto for azure. It’s only when such a connection is made after the fact that it becomes engrained into our cultural understanding of colors and genders. Luckily, this stupid-ass sexist bullshit has been subjected to increased scrutiny over the past years, and it’s great to see that fashion (and skateboarding) is catching up. Case in point: the recent upsurge of pink-colored clothing. Most skateboarding and street wear companies, including (but not limited to) Nike SB, The Quite Life, Carhartt, Magenta, and Polar Skate Co., have released products in pink, from 5-panel caps to t-shirts and shoes, from coach jackets to hoodies. And given that skateboarding is (sadly) a male-dominated sport, it’s cool to see that formerly gender-specific colors do not seem to matter as much anymore. So get your outfit up to date with all of our pink stuff, and show those permanently stuck in the past conservatives who’s wearing the fucking pants.
