By: Blonde Two

If you ever feel like lighting the blue (or in this case pink) touch paper, find a group of outdoor woman and suggest that women’s outdoor gear is best in pretty shades of pink. You would probably be amazed at the incendiary effect of this innocent comment. Never before in the history of female shopping has a colour been so denigrated, never before have so many women turned to shades of blue.

It is true (well sometimes) that if you look around the ‘female’ section of an outdoor gear shop, not only will you notice that it is smaller than the ‘male’ section but also that a fair proportion of items have a hint of pink on them. There will be a dark grey fleece with a fuschia coloured cord, purple walking boots with geranium pink stripes and (if you are really lucky) some walking socks that are exactly the same as the boy socks but in a pastel shade of rose. There is currently some debate in female outdoor gear circles as to whether salmon or coral gear also counts as pink.

Now I have to confess here that I quite like a touch of pink. Blonde One doesn’t really which makes life easier in the tent in the morning; anything blue is her’s, anything pink is mine (well it nearly works). I did a quick bit of research about this much-maligned hue and am beginning to see what those rebellious female outdoor gear purchasers are talking about. Here is one definition,

(Pink is) Sweet, nice, cute, romantic, charming, feminine, and tender, and is associated with bubble gum, flowers, babies, ...’

And here is one for pink’s big brother red,

(Red is) energising. It excites the emotions and motivates us to take action. It signifies a pioneering spirit and leadership qualities promoting ambition and determination.

I think I have a solution to this fluffy problem, all we need to do is to rebrand ‘pink’ as ‘muted red’. It would have all of the macho, get outside qualities of red but without feeling the need to shout about it.