I’m not an angry person. I sing in the shower and like long walks on the beach. However, every once in awhile, or maybe a couple of times in the average day, something strikes may as ridiculous and egregious, and I feel I have to comment.Loudly.

Lots of times the things I care deeply about are important. I’m worried about the Ukraine and North Korea and Venezuela.I care about friends, family and strangers. I’m researching fraking (fracking? frakking? At least I’m researching how to spell fracking…) and how to save water. I’m involved in local, state and national politics (I mean, I vote, right?) Seriously, I want you to believe I’m an intelligent, engaged person. I listen to the BBC, for Chrissakes!

Anyway, despite all of this, every now and again someone will say something in passing, an aside, an innocuous little observation, and it will just PISS ME OFF. I don’t know why. I’m not proud of it. But also, I like to hear myself talk. Or, you know, read what I have written. And it is my blog, which means I can start sentences with conjunctions or post anything I want. So there. I don’t have to justify myself to you! Here is an essay regarding my irritation vis a vis a certain feminine shade… Enjoy!

Embrace Your Inner Pink

From the moment they gush into the white light of existence, writhing goo covered in incarnadine chunks of their mothers, their fontanelles pulsing a blue tattoo, baby girls are given the color pink. It is their birthright.  Of course, many babies are pink, but it is not the color for boys; to swaddle a male child in a fluffy pink blanket would be at best confusing, at worst offensive. There are lots of little girls who are never pink. They grow up amber or coffee, sepia or gold, copper or earth, but we don’t care about those girl babies. They are hardly worth mentioning. Pink is what we want our girls to be.

The hue of adorable piglets, pinkness squirms and frolics in hay and clover. Their coloring lets us forget piglets will morph into hogs, sows or boars. We don’t like them as much then, and we can’t make silk purses from their ears. No matter how much lipstick we slather on them, they are still pigs. When they lose their pink, they become filthy and insatiable. We do like them when they turn pink again, as ham or bacon. Pigs, and pink, are a highly consumable commodity.

It is the color of cotton candy, sticky sugar spun, and is barely opaque, like a fairy’s wing. Anyway, there are no fairies. Cotton candy is light, sweet and air. It has no substance and zero nutritional value. It can hurt your teeth and make you sick. Pepto Bismol is pink, too.

Pink is passion sublimated, lust’s crimson without teeth, nails or growls. Pink feels fine, flat on its back, and, anyway, it will be over soon.

The nipples and labia of the Playmates are airbrushed pink as a bunny’s nose. They will only stay that color for a little while; pages yellow and become smudged and stained. By the time aureolas and vaginas find their true colors and deepen to coral, brown, plum and fog, nobody is interested in them, or that to which they are attached. Hardly worth mentioning.

Pink is the rosy dawn of embarrassment and shame, the first blush of insecurity.

The new pink is hot and sassy, clamoring for attention, screaming, “Look at me! Can you see me? Don’t I stand out well against zebra print? I’m wild! Do I have your attention? Hey! Watch me! Look what I can do!”  The new pink is too loud. It’s a fuschia fussilade. It tries too hard. You see it a lot in teenagers’ bows, on satin bedazzled hearts that barely cover a stripper’s twat, and on the bifocaled readers old ladies wear around their necks.

On Valentine’s Day, all the candy is pink, shiny wrappers over chemical coloring and corn syrup. No food in nature is pink, is it? There’s dragon fruit, but that’s too ethnic. Hardly worth mentioning.

Pink is the color of JonBenet’s pouty kiss and breast cancer. It’s the dick of a dog and the petal that hides a thorn, the eye of the albino and bubble gum spat on the sidewalk. It’s the delicate inside of the shell you don’t notice until it is broken. It’s what we give our women, their birthright.

And now it’s a concept. Yesterday I was told to “embrace my inner pinkness.”  My inner pinkness. What the hell! Pink is a shitty color to have to drag around. It is weak, muted, infantile and unnatural. I prefer to conceptualize something less abstract – my “inner penis”; not so much a man’s organ, but more of an ideal of strength and power, a battering ram against sweet softness, compliance and complacency. It’s what allows women to stand solid, righteously erect, sniffing out opportunities covered and concealed. It turns us magenta. It is that within us that says, “I want,” and  “I deserve,”  and “I will have.” It quivers with possibilities and puffs purple, red and blue with hope. My inner penis tells me to try new things and to see beauty in places my eyes might ignore. It paints pinks with pearly whites, a glistening silver lining that says, “I’ve been here! Remember me!” It makes me beat my chest with pride and joy, swagger when I walk, to forgive my trespasses and failed experiments. We all have an inner penis… but girls aren’t allowed to talk about theirs. Instead we try to make meals out of frosting, and Siddhartha out of Cinderella.

I am vulnerable and childlike, delicate and sometimes brazen. I recognize the part of me that is pink. I even see its beauty, charm and poignancy. But I won’t embrace it. It’s not all a woman is – it’s only the tip of the nipple.

Whew! I feel better! Have a great week, and for the sake of your health, chill out, wouldja?