Pink is bubblegum. Pink is cotton candy. Pink is definitely Barbie. But laptops? iPods? Gadgets? Widgets? Gizmos? Please – stop it already. I may have to reach for my Pepto Bismol if this all this pink doesn’t stop. Yes, I’m a girl, but, no, I don’t need my tech toys to match my gender.
Don’t get me wrong, aesthetics play a huge role in purchasing decisions. This is why Apple’s art-deco avant garde designs go hand in hand with cult like following. This is why the question, “Are you a Mac or a PC?” has everything to do with superior design and superior technology as much as it has to do with a sound and functional OS. But it is the aesthetics of design, not color choice or “gender typing”, which make Mac such an attractive product. 
Aesthetics are one thing and “gender typing” a tech device is another. Why do companies insist on splattering shades of pink on their products when selling to a female audience? Since when did women like only pink? Case in point: Blackberry. Last year, RIM released the Blackberry Pearl in a soft baby pink hue. If the words “pearl” and “pink” aren’t girly enough, I don’t know what is. Most women, in an effort to be taken seriously, stay away from pink. Just take “Legally Blonde” for example. Almost everything Elle Woods owned was pink. People found her juvenile and automatically assumed she was “too dumb” for Harvard Law. Her love for the rosy color kept people from taking her seriously–yet it helped her stand out (read: pink and scented resumes). As laughable as it sounds, pink is instantly associated with juvenile tendencies and a “dumb blonde” stereotype—one that has been broken too many times to name.
It’s not pink, but it might as well be. The purple-hued Hannah Montana PSP is another sexist technology device. The fact that I think Hannah Montana isn’t the best role-model for today’s pre-teens is beside the point. But honestly, does the console a girl plays with have to be purple? Lilac to be exact? And the Hannah Montana game is definitely not aimed at boys. Instead, it just reinforces the stereotype that women can’t play more complex and intricate games like Zelda or Final Fantasy and that there is suddenly a need to develop “girly” games that teach cooking, fashion design, singing, and dancing. I understand the lilac PSP is Sony’s attempt to recognize and capitalize on the female market and turn them into gamers as well, but I am very confident they can do it with neutral tones of whites, greens and yellows.
Since the 1920s pink has been a gender-associated color. Initially, pink was for boys and blue was for girls. This was because pink was thought to be more masculine since it was in same spectrum as red. It wasn’t until the 1940s that pink made the switch to a “feminine color” and since then it has been evolving and taking on many meanings.
I have mixed feelings about the color pink in the technology world. On one hand I am happy to see that tech companies are realizing the strong and savvy female audience they now have. On the other, I dislike the color for what it commonly stands for: fragility, daintiness, the absolute girly-girl just to name a few. However, the color is evolving to mean more, and pink can also stand for strength (it is the official color for Breast Cancer Awareness) but these uses are few and far between.
We here at Girls in Tech strive to be a voice in an otherwise male-dominated field and we are making it known and putting it on blast – pink isn’t just pretty, but pretty powerful.
