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A pair of light pink pants worn by a male student at Harvard, exploring gendered color norms.
fashion
Every now and then I muster up the courage to wear the only item of pink clothing in my wardrobe: a pair of light pink pants. Even in a liberal environment like Harvard, wearing pink pants as a man raises eyebrows and elicits responses from people, mostly compliments but every now and then an odd indirect question about my sexuality. The color pink has such strong associations with femininity that when I wear pink, as opposed to blue, grey or any other color, it is seen as a statement and not just a color choice. So why are my pink pants controversial? How did pink become a color "for girls" and not "for boys"?