The University of Iowa… for decades has painted the locker room used by opponents pink to put them \u201cin a passive mood\u201d with a \u201csissy color,\u201d in the words of a former head football coach, Hayden Fry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That\u2019s from Frank Bruni\u2019s\u00a0NY Times op-ed<\/a>\u00a0today.\u00a0 But not all cultures link pink to femininity.\u00a0 The Palermo soccer team wears pink uniforms<\/a>\u00a0as do other European teams.\u00a0 In the U.S., it was only in the 1950s that pink took on its \u201cboys keep out\u201d message, and even then, a charcoal gray suit was often matched with a pink shirt or necktie.\u00a0 In\u00a0The Great Gatsby<\/i>, set in 1922, Nick writes of Gatsby:<\/p>\n His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of color against the white steps, and I thought of the night when I first came to his ancestral home, three months before.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n In the previous chapter, Tom Buchanan says that he has been \u201cmaking a small investigation\u201d of Gatsby\u2019s past.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd you found he was an Oxford man,\u201d said Jordan helpfully.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cAn Oxford man!\u201d He was incredulous. \u201cLike hell he is! He wears a pink suit.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Gatsby\u2019s choice of suit colors reveals not his sexuality but his class origins.\u00a0 An educated, upper-class gentleman \u2013 an Oxford man \u2013 would not wear a pink suit.\u00a0 Anna Broadway cites this passage in her Atlantic\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0and adds,<\/p>\n According to an interview with the costume designer for Baz Luhrmann\u2019s recent film, the color had working-class connotations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Today, that class connotation is reversed.\u00a0 It\u2019s the preppie type men at the country club who are wearing pink shirts or even, on the golf course, pants. \u00a0 That trend may be reinforced by something entirely fortuitous \u2013 a name.\u00a0 The upscale fashion designer Thomas Pink, perhaps because of his name, does not shy away from pink as a color for men\u2019s clothes.<\/p>\n Do you agree that pink still has class connotations? \u00a0And how do they intersect with the color’s gendered meaning today?<\/p>\n Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University<\/a>. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pink, as we all know, is all about gender \u2013 it\u2019s for girls.\u00a0 And sissies. The University of Iowa… for decades has painted the locker room used by opponents pink to put them \u201cin a passive mood\u201d with a \u201csissy color,\u201d in the words of a former head football coach, Hayden Fry. That\u2019s from Frank […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":56809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,373,55,253,778,23694,293],"class_list":["post-56807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-color","tag-gender","tag-history","tag-intersectionality","tag-intersectionality-gender-x-class","tag-social-construction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/08\/22.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56807"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67795,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56807\/revisions\/67795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"1\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/08\/16.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"2\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/08\/22.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n