Welcome to Mean Girls Week. Here are the Rules:
- Don’t wear a tank top two days in a row
- You can only wear your hair in a ponytail once a week
- On Wednesdays, we wear pink
- You can only wear jeans or track pants on Friday
- Be effortlessly plastic
You must take a photo of your outfit every day and share your thoughts.
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I don’t like pink because it is the “girl” color and I feel it’s often a one-dimensional characterization of women because it’s soft and pretty and quiet. Blarg. I have nothing that’s substantially pink in my wardrobe.Wearing pink is outside my comfort zone and I was dreading Wednesday.
According to the rules, you only need some pink - I said to myself, Maeve (which is apparently what I call myself now), I’m going ALL out. See, the Plastics’ pink-on-pink costuming started that trend in the 2000s that made it ok for you to wear a lot of one color - mainly, pink.
Before that, it was “too much.”
There are voices and pressures that can berate us for being "too much" or "not enough" and a high percentage of that pressure is based on looks. In my experience, dress codes and presentations are directed at how women should look so we can be taken seriously and be successful. So ingrained is this rhetoric that I don’t wear pink as secret rebellion.
My inner-critic told me I should wear a black blazer to mute this pinkness, this girlishness, this unapologetic bubblegum announcement that turns "woman" into "girl"…And I stopped myself.
How brutal is that? I would never tell someone to mute themselves. What if someone really, really liked pink...?
I remembered former coworkers who have neck tattoos and gauges that needed to be muted. Or a transgendered friend who struggled to fit norms in order to be seen – she has to hide who she is to be seen. If you are going to be taken seriously - you have to follow these rules..?
(sad face)
Their skills, kindness and talents are so much more than their aesthetic could ever be. Their expressions of themselves or their moods does not limit them, it limits others. So, I grabbed this glittery necklace over a black blazer. Cause #extra.
Honestly, the areas outside my comfort zone are such luxuries and I lost sight of that while having a mini-tantrum over wearing pink. There are people who might step out of their assigned zone and actually be really hurt.
No one would ever condemn me for wearing pink.
People showing up as they are – to work, to help, to connect – can be a struggle that is beyond my flippant disregard for pink and eye-rolling expression toward those who lecture me on how I need to manage my femininity. There are people whose “on Wednesdays we wear pink” takes an amount of courage I don’t think I have.
Here is what I do know.
There is no way we can innovate in a closed system. I reminded myself to seek out and support who people are. People with unique interests, expressions, perceived or actual disabilities, methods and perspectives open doors and concepts beyond my imagination. I don’t want accepted norms (even my own norms) to become a mental cage that holds me back from making connections.
On Wednesday, we wear pink.
And. I wore pink. (Thanks, Amazon Prime!)
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