Pink

Pink is a pale red color; the use of the word for the color was first recorded in the late 17th century, describing the flowers of pinks, flowering plants in the genus Dianthus. Pink itself is a combination of red and white. Other tints of pink may be combinations of rose and white, magenta and white, or orange and white.

Roseus is a Latin word meaning "rosy" or "pink." Lucretius used the word to describe the dawn in his epic poem On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura). The word is also used in the binomial names of several species, such as the Rosy Starling (Sturnus roseus) and Catharanthus roseus.

In the 17th century, however, the word pink was also used to describe a greenish or yellowish color. Thomas Jenner's A Book of Drawing, Limning, Washing (1652) categorizes "Pink & blew bice" amongst the greens (p.38), and specifies several admixtures of greenish colors made with pink -- e.g. "Grasse-green is made of Pink and Bice, it is shadowed with Indico and Pink ... French-green of Pink and Indico [shadowed with] Indico" (pp.38-40). In William Salmon's Polygraphice (1673), "Pink yellow" is mentioned amongst the chief yellow pigments (p.96), and the reader is instructed to mix it with either Saffron or Ceruse for "sad" or "light" shades thereof, respectively (p.98).

1 World Population

2 Pink in Gender

• In Western culture, the practice of assigning pink to an individual gender began in the 1920s. From then until the 1940s, pink was considered appropriate for boys because being related to red it was the more masculine and decided color, while blue was considered appropriate for girls because it was the more delicate and dainty color, or related to the Virgin Mary. Since the 1940s, the societal norm apparently inverted so that pink became appropriate for girls and blue appropriate for boys, a practice that has continued into the 21st century.
• Though the color pink has sometimes been associated with gender stereotypes, some feminists have sought to reclaim it. For example, the Swedish radical feminist party Feminist Initiative and the American activist women's group Code Pink: Women for Peace use pink as their color.
• The pink ribbon is the international symbol of breast cancer awareness. Pink was chosen partially because it is so strongly associated with femininity.
• It has been suggested that females prefer pink because of a preference for reddish things like ripe fruits and healthy faces. This suggestion, however, has been criticized as unsubstantiated.

3 Pink in sexuality

• Whereas Jewish people were forced to wear a yellow star of David under Nazi rule, and Roma people were forced to wear a black triangle, men imprisoned on accusations of homosexuality or same-sex sexual activity were forced to wear a pink triangle. Nowadays, the pink triangle is often worn with pride.
• A Dutch newsgroup about homosexuality is called nl.roze (roze being the Dutch word for pink), while in Britain, Pink News is a leading gay newspaper and online news service. There is a magazine called Pink for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) community which has different editions for various metropolitan areas. In France Pink TV is an LGBT cable channel.
• In business, the pink pound or pink dollar refers to the spending power of the LGBT community. Advertising agencies sometimes call the gay market the pink economy.

4 Pink in Nature

• The pink iguana is an iguana that was first identified in 1986 and first recognized as a distinct species in 2009.
• Most flamingo species are pink in color due to pink pigments in their diet.

5 Pink in human culture

5.1 Alcoholic beverages

• Seeing pink elephants is a euphemism for hallucinations caused by delirium tremens. The concept was used in the Disney's animated film Dumbo when the title character accidentally becomes drunk and sees a parade of pink elephants.
• A pink lady is an alcoholic beverage made with gin and grenadine syrup and may include other ingredients. A pink squirrel is made of white creme de cacao, creme de noyaux and cream.
• Pink Gin is a cocktail made by rinsing a glass with bitters and filling with gin.

5.2 Art

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• In 1993, artist Gioia Fonda created a conceptual piece in the form of a week long holiday called pink week. The intention of pink week is to liberate the color pink from all dogma and simply celebrate the color pink as a color.
• Bubblegum Pink is an installation by the artist duo Bigert & Bergstrom which "confronted [the viewer] with three different mental climates" involving large amounts of pink. This mirrors the use of the color in American prisons to calm aggressive prisoners. It features a pink cell and a carpet worn by repetitive pacing.
• Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Surrounded Islands wrapped wooded islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay with 6,500,000 square feet (604,000 m2) of bright pink fabric. Thomas von Taschitzki has said that "the monochrome pink wrappings"..."form a counterpoint to the small green wooded islands." [26]

5.2.1 Sculpture

Many of Franz West's aluminium sculptures were often painted a bright pink, for example Sexualitatssymbol (Symbol of Sexuality). West has said that the pink was intended as an "outcry to nature".

5.3 Film

• Pretty In Pink has the color named in the title
• The Pink Panther is a popular cartoon character.
• Pink Cadillac was a 1989 movie starring Clint Eastwood.
• Pink Ladies was the name of Betty Rizzo's (Stockard Channing) gang in the film, Grease (film).
• In Japan, blue films were categorized as Pink films (ピンク映画 ,Pinku Eiga?)[30]. Such description is not used recently since "Adult Videos (アダルトビデオ ,Adaruto Bideo?) became popular.
• In the movie adaptation of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, Dolores Jane Umbridge wears only pink and has a pink office.

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