PINK ME

What is your favorite color? This is one of those innane questions we ask of each other in the getting-acqainted encounter with a new date or a fellow guest at a party.

What is my favorite color? I answer without hesitation that I like all colors. I say that no color is inherently beautiful or ugly; it all depends on the context and the use. It depends how it is used, with what other color or colors one color is combined or juxtaposed, and what expressive meaning we want to communicate with it.

Still, personally, I confess that I am passionate about pink. Saying this does not contradict my liking all colors. I like all colors but I am partial to pink. I am drawn to all shades of pink. I like light pink, deep pink, and pinks anywhere between them. I like icy pink, hot pink, pale pink, smoky pink, electric pink, flamingo pink, bubblegum pink, and dayglow pink. I like rose, peony, fuchsia, raspberry, azalea, carnation, primrose -- the colors of spring blossoms. I like peach and salmon, too, and lilac, lavender, violet, and purple, as well. But the pink I like best is pink pink, the color of the flower pink.

A recent fashion slogan proclaimed: Pink is this year's Black. In fact, until this year, pink felt infantile unless it was more like peony. For decades it was a color that seemed flighty and frivolous. It was the color for babies and young girls; and hot pink was vulgar. In the fifties pink was the favorite color of Mimi Eisenhower; and it felt so matronly in those days. We remember pink polyester suits; and if my memory serves me right, pink was not the choice of young people in the 60s and 70s, unless it was a hot, psychedelic kind of pink. Orange was more in fashion, although I still own a pair of bell bottom pants in smoky pink from the 70s. Pink in clothing today is conspicuously youthful.

A recent fashion slogan proclaimed: Pink is this year's Black. In fact, until this year, pink felt infantile unless it was more like peony. For decades it was a color that seemed flighty and frivolous. It was the color for babies and young girls; and hot pink was vulgar. In the fifties pink was the favorite color of Mimi Eisenhower; and it felt so matronly in those days. We remember pink polyester suits; and if my memory serves me right, pink was not the choice of young people in the 60s and 70s, unless it was a hot, psychedelic kind of pink. Orange was more in fashion then, although I still own a pair of wide bell-bottom pants in smoky pink from the 70s. Pink in clothing today is more conspicuously youthful.

In Japan as in old countries in Europe, choice of color in women's wardrobe is conventionalized by age and marital status. Older women elect darker tones and typically eschew bright palette; and pink, above all, is assigned to adolescents. It used to be that a woman wearing pink at thirty drew glaring glances even though the code of the kimono loosened with the Western style clothing. Brighter colors were more acceptable at certain festivals. Still a woman over sixty in pink would not only be merely stared at or openly rebuked; she would have been thought to have lost her senses. Only a madwoman would go around in a pink dress at seventy.

Defying convention is probably one factor supporting my taste for pink. There was a report some years ago that pink possesses a calming effect on the nerves of violent criminals and the volatile psyche in general. Without fully realizing it, I may be finding myself drawn to pink for this reason. But this is unlikely; for I feel more elated than impassive in pink, as anyone would feel in close contact with her or his favorite color.

If the effect of color varies contextually, the meaning it purports to express also lacks constancy. Red may mean blood, courage, passion, prostitution, communism, Christmas, danger, or stop. As a sign, it may be natural, indexical, or totally arbitrary. In Japan the police sentry box is indicated by a red light, and so is the very last night bus and trolley. Indeterminacy of color as semiotic codes is further complicated by the woeful lexical inadequacy in describing color. The cosmetic industry tries hard to be inventive in naming lipstick colors. Naming all the pink flowers to describe a variety of pinks is not quite adequate. One may resort to the color wheel and describe a color scientifically by hue, value, and saturation. No less adequate is a mental image of a particular. Ultimately and inevitably the experience of color is direct perception. That's why we take a swatch of fabric to the store when we want a right match in an item of clothing.