WARNING, crude language to follow.

Come on women - don't you realize what wearing "pink" symbolizes? Don't you teach your sisters and daughters what it is a subconscious representation to men?

Pussy. Plain and simple. Pink is a signal that "I see am presenting myself first as my pussy and as anything else second".

I realize this sounds crude - but cruise around a bit. Google Pink and porn as your too keywords. As our culture gets progressively more visual, this sort of "hidden cuing" be it the use of Left/Right dynamism in the famous painting of spanish rebels being executed or the use of "underpainting" by The Masters, becomes the primary driver of any sort of imaged message.

And while other colors have various emotive responses, when you dress up in pink, the men - especially the young males - are cued by the allusions, color mapping, word context etc. of PINK to think pussy.

So women, if you want to go into any sort of business setting and devalue your professionalism - wear something pink. It doesn't have to be anything more than a pink strap on your handbag - but you are telling all your male co-workers "I'm more about sex than brains, I'm willing to move forwards using sexuality than competance.

Yeah, that is precisely why Victoria's Secret demonstrates the profound death of feminism. Its core message to women is that "you are your pussy".

And little boys are made to wear blue to signify all the blue balls all that pink should drive them too.

Not sure I can agree that pink = female genitals, even on a subconcious level. I mean, red and black are also two very common "sexy" colors that women wear. I'd put them right up there with pink. What all those colors are is extremely vivid, whether in a bra or on a car. Your attention is just drawn to them.

Although I do agree that if you're looking to be taken seriously in a professional environment, pink is not the color to wear.

No, not really. Remember its women who dress boys up in blue.

Red and Black are the colors of Baelzebub - Black for the eternity of darkness and red for the colors of hell. Thus the color symbolism of women wearing red is that of the Devil. Aka the original seducer (remember red and black are the colors of seduction)

Pink actually isn't particularly vivid its a hue (ie saturation level) of red. And it is particularly desaturated IE not vivid at all, so your "vividness" analogy goes out the window. In fact a saturated Yellow or Green are much much more vivid than pink.

Pink is pussy. And even in non-work settings, wearing pink does say "I am my pussy first and anything else second". Red is the color of active seduction, pink is the color of flirtation and an invitation ot romance - ie sex. But it is passive sex - of being penetrated.

And I know it sounds like I have pussy on the brain and sex on the brain. Its anything but. I actually find pink to largely be a turn-off precisely because it is so obvious, shallow and frankly boring.

I would have to agree with someone else on this thread. I am not quite certain as to which article this is referring to. However, I don't think Pink or the color pink for that matter is an entirely negative thing.

I happen to like the color pink, as well as a whole slough of other colors, but that doesn't mean when I where pink I am subconsciously thinking of, as you put it, "pussy." It is a bright, warm color. I believe a bit of color in anyone's wardrobe is something to be admired and goes away from the humdrum of straight black.

Also, the line Pink is not as offensive as another company's line--for instance, Juicy Couture. Seeing Juicy written on the back of sweats is more offensive to me than Pink.

And as to one of the opinion pieces, I do not think it was VS's intent to target Pink to the tween and teen crowd. I believe its primary goal was to attract the college students. This is why VS now specifically makes a subset of the Pink line with official college logos for state colleges as well as for the Greek system.

Also, VS has admitted that the growth of its Pink line and approach to target a younger crowd has taken a toll on its original customers--those of the career aged, middle aged type and has expressed its desire to tone down the raunchiness and cater again to its older clientele.

That and the VS Pink line is really comfortable. And whereas the article said that Pink showed too much skin, it actually doesn't. I walked into the VS store and have seen their site online and I don't really see how Pink sweats are revealing. They cover everything up. I saw no indication of midriff baring shirts as the article claimed. Even on my campus, when I see girls wearing the Pink line, none of it is revealing any skin.

Yes VS has a tendency to be in your face with its sexuality, but I do not think it is entirely fair to paint them as the devil's spawn in the situation. They came out and publicly said that they wanted to tone it down.

Here's a slightly off topic comment. Women and girls who wear these sweats all over the place. Call me a bit old-fashioned but sweats aren't really appropriate 'everywhere' clothing.

I think if they are appealing to the college kids with the PINK stamped on the ass of their sweats they are doing so as loungewear - or, call me crazy, workout wear.

I am always amazed at the sauced up tarts who board airplanes in their sweats. Usually you get the hoodie, the panties peeking over the pants and the sweatpants themselves all in one glorious pastel color.

If women wore the PINK line in the appropriate places no one would even think twice about the so called underlying meanings.

As an aside, the airlines ruin the flying experience everyday with their stupidity, but the passengers don't elevate anything by dressing like schlubs that just crawled out of bed. Return some dignity to the process people. Stop acting like cattle and maybe you won't continue being treated like them.

Based on your multitude of responses on various social issues, one can only assume you are a fairly open-minded person. As such, the argument you put forward here has created quite a quandry. I would first like to thank you for denigrating the tens of thousands of women who suffer and have died from breast cancer. As the son of one, I am pleased to see the narrow-mindedness of your posting, even in context of VS.

I can only hope

Pussy. Plain and simple. Pink is a signal that "I see am presenting myself first as my pussy and as anything else second".

is just a poor self-representation of who you are and how you identify yourself in the mirror each day. Pink doesn't mean hope, or surviving, or stength. When I search "pink" online, I get the definition of pink, oh.... and VS Pink. When I search "porn", I get porn. Don't limp the two terms together like the fake breasts I saw searching "porn". While VS Pink by no means has identified itself as a "cure crusader", your deviling of a brand at the expense of a broad range of the population boils down to a very poor choice of words.The next time you make another bad decision like this, preface your words with "crude STATEMENT to follow", as opposed to language. Hate-speech is never kind. If you've nothing nice to say.... learn the meaning of "think before you speak", and we can all feel a little smarter in the end.

how does degsme social observation of wearing pink equal a denigration of the tens of thousands of women who have died from breast cancer? How does a crude statement equal hate speech? Maybe I would feel a little smarter in the end if I could follow your logic.

Your point about the exposed underwear is especially well taken. Great Christ, when and how did that become a fashion trend? When did slovenly = sexy?

Combine with a tramp stamp and belly button piercing, and you've got the white trash triple crown.

Some women like veins and some don't. There doesn't seem to be the unanimity in this to warrant an observation for blue or for that matter pink

You know you watch to much pr0n when you comment about like you have.

I sure you DO like the color pink, but what is curious is the language you use to describe it: "bright and warm". From a color theory approach it is neither. It is a pale shade of red. Essentially it fundamentally is a pastel. Sometimes it gets intensified by the addition of some blue but it inherently is not a "bright" color, nor is it "warm" - the term "warm" comes from the sunlight associations of yellow, and pink never has any yellow in it.

We are all accumulations of our experiences and our social programming with a touch of randomness tossed in. So I would raise the question "Why do you 'like' pink, when it does not actually meet the descriptors you apply to it?"

I would argue that largely it is the consequence of societal programming (girls are supposed to like pink). This sort of programming almost always has some element of "role based"meaning, and when it is gender differentiated, it invariably is gender-role programming. So it is important to remember that until very recently, women's gender rolse WERE to be primarily about pussy, secondarily about child-rearing.

So I would still argue that pink IS about the message "I am pussy first"

The problem with VS's sexuality is not its "in your face" quality. Rather it is the very superficiality of the sexuality. The women in VS adds are not women who own their own sexuality, they are not women for whom sex is part of a rich and broad life. They are women who even in their "liberated" pursuit of sex are still primarily there for the enjoyment of men in a Girls Gone Wild superficiality.

Now of course everyone is entitled to live their lives as they wish. And perhaps I'm a touch elitist in that I prefer women who truly own their sexuality in a way that is integrated into their emotional and intellectual lives as well. But it seems to me that accepting your (a woman's) role in sex as primarily there for the enjoyment of men is very much a surrender of power and equality.

I was thinking about this as I wrote the post. Besides the breast cancer survivors network there is Code Pink as a political movement as well. And I realized that I was not a good enough writer to include these two and still get the message across as strongly as I was seeking to.

Both the breast cancer network as well as Code Pink are in many ways revolts against the underlying symbology of pink. Like NWA, and NAS - and others before them, the taking of ownership of something that previously has been used in a controlling or derogatory manner, is an act of self-empowerment. But as with the controversy around the word "nigger: points out, there is a danger/negative aspect to this as well. As one writer put it

To take ownership of this word codifies into existence all of the meaning and power that has ever been associate with it

So while breast cancer survivors are essentially using pinkness to denote that their sexuality and they themselves are about much more than their cup-size, in doing so they very much ARE making it "a women's issue" and thus limiting to a great extent their mainstreaming of the issue.

It is precisely the way pink intertwines with sexuality that both makes it a meaningful in its breast cancer context, as well as limiting. So it isn't my comments that are conveying disrespect to those battling breast cancer, it is the uderlying color symbolism.

First lets say congrats on the editors kudos for your post. And also kudos for being willing to post something that so many might find a reason to feel upset over. Yours is not a politically correct post and there will likely be many who will want to say "shame on you" for making people think.

The cold hard fact is that most men and many women indeed see the color pink as the mark of pussy. One such cold hard fact is that it has been proven that at a distance the hardest color to see against any background is pink. That for ships and airplanes wanting to escape visual detection, pink is the proven best color. But know self respecting fly-boy or navy mand will be caught dead in a pink vessel or plane. Why? because its pink, the color associated with being a pussy. Yes a political correct term might be to say its a color associated with being feminine. But what people say is: "that pink shirt is for pussy's". Its the truth of our socities perceptions.

I don't know if this color is so percieved in other societies but it is in ours and you wrote about it with out pulling punches. Good Job.

It was about three in the morning so I'm not overly concerned with color theory and exact meaning. I was not using bright and warm as literally as you thought I was. I used bright, because it is brighter than say grey or black. I used warm because it brought up good, happy feelings not that I thought it was literally a warm color tone.

The way I describe pink is not the reason I like pink. Actually, when I was younger I used to hate pink because my mother would always buy things that were pink and I got sick of it. I am more of a blues and greens fan, but every now and then a small touch of pink or red can provide (or any color which one does not normally wear) an element of contrast depending on the setup. No, I do not want a lecture on proper contrast settings in regards to color theory, so please don't. Too much pink is nauseating. It's like letting a bottle of Pepto Bismol run loose. I think it is silly that only girls can like pink and boys blue. Anyone can like any color they please. Back when I was in high school they had a shirt day for guys which had "Real Guys Wear Pink" printed on pink tees, where you would probably interpret that as Real Guys Are Pussy Whipped.

I don't really have a problem with colors. You apparently do with a certain one. I believe you take colors a lot more seriously than do most people.

Nor do I feel bad about buying VS products. For me they are the most comfortable and last the longest out of any other product out there. Other brands are just too uncomfortable...almost as if I cannot breathe in them. I don't really care about how they advertise, as long as they have the product. Yes you can complain about the superficial sexuality but at the end of the day, it is just advertising to make a sales mark. I do not think that buying these products means that you are surrendering your power and equality to men, I think it means buying a pretty damn good bra that you have to shell out for. I once watched a documentary on Victoria's Secret, and they really do try to engineer and design bras made for the physical comfort of a woman. Back in the day I believe it was the men who tried to make the first women's bras, which ultimately failed in comfort tests because men do not know a woman's body.

As far as the color pink goes, I do not feel as passionately about it as you do, but when I see someone who is pink I think "Man, they should totally put more sunscreen on or make an emergency visit to the dermatologist." I feel that this country's disregard for proper skin and sun care protection and promotion (at least in Australia, they require sunscreen in all classrooms and require hats and sunglasses to be worn outside...in the States you get in trouble for wearing hats or sunglasses at school) is of more concern and importance to me than the social implications and significance of the color pink. I understand your points, but I feel differently. To each their own. De gustibus non disputandem est (There is no [point in] disputing about tastes).