Can Men Wear Pink?

Pink was, is and will always be one of my favourite colours. During my childhood, I had the privilege of wearing several pink dresses and playing with pink coloured toys. My parents would buy me pink coloured things without any doubt because I would them at the first sight. Even if they want to buy me something that they know I would not use or wear, they would buy me a pink one and trick me into using or wearing it, mentioning it as my favourite colour. Maybe because of these childhood memories, I have always attributed pink to be of feminine nature and thought that it is meant only for girls and ladies. But we also see some boys and men wearing a pink attire or buying and using pink coloured things on a daily basis.

I wanted to explore the idea of men wearing pink further and tried to gather some historical details. It seems that in the 18th century men used to wear pink clothing with embroidery designs on them and pink was associated with masculinity, strength and high levels of confidence. Pink was a derivative of red, which was considered to be a very strong colour and thus pink was also thought to denote youthfulness and of masculine nature. It was only after the 1940s that pink became a "girly colour" due to several product advertisements targeting the female population and novels depicting instances of pink ribbons being gifted to girl babies and blue ones for boys. That is how people started to believe that pink represented femininity.

I was curious to know if men really preferred to wear pink. To get some insights from a large crowd, I decided to apply my Research Methodology skills and created a poll on my Instagram story. The men had to answer if they would like to wear a pink shirt or trouser. 67 percent of the respondents responded with a "YES", saying that they would not mind wearing pink, while 33 percent of them said a straight "NO". There were many who did not respond, maybe out of hesitation to reveal their opinion and choice.

Here are three amazing reasons for men to choose pink and continue wearing it.

1.) Wearing pink would mean carrying forward the long legacy of manhood, as men wore pink in the past.

2.) Most women like pink and different shades of it as they relate it to high confidence levels. So, you would become a centre of attraction and would get the attention of people around you.

3.) Pink goes well with almost all the colours and thus makes it very convenient to wear. You can easily match it with dark shades like royal blue, black etc or with light shades like white, purple etc.

The above mentioned facts and reasons are strong enough for a man to go for pink without having any second thought.

I believe that after reading this article, your opinion about whether men can wear pink would have changed immensely just like mine.

Note - This article was presented in the form of a speech as part of my Corporate Communication assignment in MBA.