For the Love of Pink and Cars
Women can wear pink and love cars, too
Running high on endorphins and paint fumes from making over my downstairs bathroom, it seemed right to paint my office pink. I’ve recently become obsessed with the color pink. Everything must be pink, but not just any pink. I’m talking a light blush, think rosé on a hot summer night, the glass covered in little beads of warm, sweaty condensation. Also desirable: hot pink, neon pink, magenta, fuchsia. In a word: Barbie.
My daughter has learned to say, “Hi Bahbie,” to everything pink, particularly my new clear, magenta glasses frames, known in this household as “Bahbie gasses.” On the surface, I think this is cute and fun, so I encourage this endearing behavior. But that’s not why I love pink so much.
Pink is a color I have long prohibited myself from admiring. Starting as a teenager, I refused to buy anything pink, whether it was clothing or phone covers. I even prefer white, green, or yellow flowers, anything but dreaded pink.
When I was pregnant, I refused to tell anyone the sex of our baby until she was born. One of several reasons was I did not want her bathed in pastel shades of rose and coral, not unless the garment was inexorably cool. If an item were so stylish that a baby girl should wear it, I reasoned it would be just as appropriate for a boy and should thus be judged on its merit and not its coloring.
Internalized Misogyny
Where did this hatred of pink come from? Pink is the color for girls and women. Baby clothes come in pink to indicate girls, and branding is pink to indicate it’s for girls or women, like the breast cancer awareness ribbon. Because it represents female, it is a second rate color, unlike blue whose job is not solely a symbol of masculinity, and is, of course, the world’s favorite color. Only a “real man” can wear pink, right? Only a man who is so manly, so buff, a masterpiece of strength and vigor can offset the softness and feminineness of pink. Because otherwise he’s… a fake man? I don’t know, I don’t make the rules. I’ve just spent a lot of my life following them, even these dumb ones, like hating pink because it intrinsically represents what is wrong with me: I am not a man.
Working in automotive for my entire professional career, I internalized a lot of misogyny, even though I’ve always been a feminist. In order to fit in, to be one of the guys, I was gutsy, brash, and cool. I eschewed anything deemed “girly,” like motherhood, claiming I’d never have kids; feminine looking company cars, always opting for rugged SUVs that only seat 5; and yes, the color pink.
I felt the inescapable pressure to be sexy and exuberant to be a welcome member to the boys club, but I still had to prove I could hang. Though I dressed in hyper-feminine clothing and wore a lot of makeup, I never wore or carried anything too frilly—or pink—lest I not be taken seriously. My friend, Rob, teased me when I got an earthy toned manicure saying that it looked like the color of runoff waste water from Burger King.
In my 20’s and early 30’s when I worked for Nissan and Chrysler, we had lots of conferences and long meetings. To blow off steam afterwards, everyone got together to socialize. I drank booze, smoked, and was always the last one to go to bed—basically the opposite of what is professionally appropriate in any work setting (except, somehow, corporate automotive.)
I was popular and successful. People liked me, they wanted to be around me and work with me. It seemed like I was doing the right things, even if I was exhausted, beleaguered with migraines and hangovers, and taken advantage of. Being “one of the guys” was validated when I went to a German luxury brand and was alienated from my team because I’d begun to reign in my behavior. My boss told me when I stayed in my hotel room some nights that, “It looked like I wasn’t part of the team.”
Except that during the day, I was still a top performer, even if I wasn’t pounding tequila shots in the evenings. Maybe I didn’t want to be on that team anymore. Maybe I really did want to be a mother and wear pink glasses and not be judged as unworthy because I am a woman who is sometimes interested in traditionally female things, like babies and pink wine. Maybe, I’m not one of the guys anymore.
Cars Are For Everyone
I love cars, and that might make me special in the eyes of our culture that believes automotive is a man’s terrain, but it’s not. According to Kathleen Michon, Attorney at Northwestern University School of Law, “Women buy 54% of the cars in the United States, and influence 84% of all vehicle purchase decisions.” Cars make motherhood accessible, as we can drive our kids to day care, school, activities, and we can complete other responsibilities often assigned to women and mothers, like grocery and clothing shopping. Not that I’m an advocate for traditional gender roles, but even if I were, I’d concede that women can’t do “women’s work” without transportation, and for most, that means a car.
Cars are wonderful. They are motorized sculptures. Highly trained and educated artists and engineers spend years designing cars, their hood lines and aerodynamics, the shape of their headlights and exhaust pipes, the slope of a dash or door handle. Cars solve problems and connect our communities, particularly in a nation that doesn’t prioritize efficient public transit. Cars create billions of jobs all around the world. Cars cause problems, too, of course, like climate change and traffic, but those are avoidable. That we haven’t chosen to address those problems adequately is not an indictment on the value and goodness of the car.
Art is for everyone. Science is for everyone. Engineering is for everyone. Cars are for everyone.
So, why, I ask, does our society continue to gate-keep women from automotive knowledge and acumen? Is it because cars represent the American mythology of freedom, rebellion, and the open road, and that adventure should remain reserved for men? Or is it because cars are dirty and oily and we are uncomfortable thinking about women with grease under their nails? Perhaps it’s seen as threatening to acknowledge that women are capable of making advanced financial decisions, something traditionally relegated to their male partners. “…it wasn’t until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) was passed in 1974 that women were able to get their own credit cards in their own name,” in another word: unmarried.
Freedom
I took a pause from my automotive career from 2020-2024 to have my daughter. In that time away from the nefarious culture found at many corporate automotive manufacturers, I became more accepting of “feminine” things. I recognized that as a person with the so-called freedom of America, I’m entitled to like whatever the hell I like, be it muscle cars or bubble baths. I gave myself permission to like the color pink because it is a beautiful color, regardless of the message others infer about it.
Let me address the pink elephant in the room: I don’t want a pink car, but must provide credit where it’s due. Porsche used to make a stunning salmon metallic colored paint, which was recently brought back, and who doesn’t love a hot pink Barbie Wrangler?
We’re All Pink In The Middle
I’m writing a memoir about my experience in automotive as a woman and the challenges I experienced in a male dominated industry. I'm spending a lot of time reflecting on the past and how and why I did certain things; thinking a lot about my identity, what it means to be a woman, what it means to be me, a complex, contradictory human with all the same problems as everyone else.
Since I've permitted myself to be fully absorbed in the color pink, I painted a wall in my office. My favorite color is grey, so I've offset all that icky femininity with the same charcoal I used in my bathroom. I’m not worried about the resale value because I want to live for myself and not others (and paint is pretty damn easy to cover).
Having a pink office allows me to immerse myself in my project, and confront my gender identity. We act according to our gender almost every minute of the day without even thinking about it and I wonder how many of those choices I would make if I thought about it deliberately. I could perform disgust at the prospect of not shaving my legs or underarms, but I wouldn’t do it to be more lady-like if it weren’t something prescribed by our western culture as a due burden of femininity.
Earlier this year, I accepted a job working for a new automotive company that is not a manufacturer. We are a women led business, and while we have our own insecurities or traumas, none of us ever have to worry about proving we belong. After all, as my late friend David used to say, “We’re all pink in the middle.”
What is your favorite color and why?
Love this piece. It's so engaging and atmospheric. I am waiting for my apology for being forbidden to buy pink clothes for my granddaughter. What could be more fun?