Pink, a Color Struggling with Gender: Unraveling the History and Cultural Significance

For almost fifteen years he has literally seen life in rosy colors. Artist and researcher in gender studies, Kévin Bideaux publishes a rich anthology, which traces the social, political and cultural history of this gendered color and much more complex than it seems.

Barbie pink, pastel pink, powder pink, grenadine pink, old pink, salmon pink, peach pink, bougainvillea pink… There are hundreds of shades of the color pink, with one common condition: that of being constantly associated with the feminine and gender stereotypes. Who has never heard that “pink is for girls?” Historically, however, this has not always been the case, as Kévin Bideaux points out in Pink, a color struggling with gender (Amsterdam editions, October 2023). A book from his thesis work which, in addition to being (very) beautiful, offers a fascinating exploration of Western culture through the prism of pink.

Where we learn, for example, that until the Age of Enlightenment, pink was a color that simply did not exist. “The color pink is represented in medieval paintings and illuminations but it was a shade of red, a sort of faded red. explains Kévin Bideaux, member of the Gender and Sexuality Studies Laboratory (Legs) at Chat. We then speak of “flesh red” or incarnat (from the Italian incar­na­toderived from carne which means flesh).

Des origines aristos

Although we often hear that it was a symbol of virility, in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, pink was not the color of women… nor was it that of men. If artists use it to paint male portraits – the best known being that ofHenry IV a Marsby Jacob Bunel (1605−1606) – it is more a question of proportion. “There are more men depicted wearing pink, because there are simply more men depicted in art than[…]