It pains me to admit that I look better in pink than in blue. All through my childhood I refused to wear pink. Pink was for girls. I was not a girl. Q.E.D. I would wear blue, thank you. One of the first fights that I remember over clothing was the purchase of a pair of leather Oxford shoes. I was in nursery school. I wanted the navy blue ones. My mother wanted me to get the red ones. I pitched a fit.
If you read that first paragraph carefully, you guessed that there were many fights. Many of them over clothing. Many of them over shoes. Until I was in the middle of 5th grade, girls had to wear dresses to school, even pubic schools. There was not much of a point in fighting about that. It was “The Law”. I had an assortment of drab dresses that I absolutely hated. Not because they were drab.
Drab for me was always fine, at least until recently. Navy blue comes in many shades; I own clothing in all of them. Butches appreciate the nuances of navy blue. “Everything goes with blue jeans” is my motto, although I wouldn’t have included pink shirts until recently. I learned to wear pink by wearing what I thought of as “men’s pink”. I was at work and I saw a guy wearing a pink shirt and I thought “If he can do that then I can do that”. I went out and bought my first Brooks Brothers button down Oxford cloth shirt in pink.
I have a thing about button down shirts. I own about twenty of them. Four of them are pink. Initially it was hard for me to accept that I looked good in pink. I knew I looked good in maroon. Maroon was cool. Maroon could be a team color. Pink was for girls, except when it was for guys and then I could wear it. Once I could accept that I was handsome in pink, it worked. Sometimes my own logic defies logic.