The word pink

Its power was extreme: rose is more or less called rose —

rose

,

rosen

,

rozen

,

roza

,

rosza

,

ruža

,

růže

,

ruus

,

ruusu

,

roos

,

ross

,

arrosa

— in all the languages ​​of the West and its surroundings: few words so unanimous.

But few, too, have lost as much lately as the word

pink

.

In very different ways: to begin with, by the abandonment of Latin.

For two millennia, in the West, no one was cultured—or magical—if he did not know Latin: after many centuries as a

lingua

franca, Latin was the language of a god and of the scientists who polished it.

And the emblem—or caricature—of their learning was a class of young boys without girls reciting the declension of the word rose:

rosa rosa rosam rosae rosae rosa

.

It still touched me—and I remember it fondly—but now it only resonates in some half-empty seminary, things about priests that priests ignore.

But the rose was more than anything a symbol: of love, for example.

In the story, in style: the first night between Cleopatra and Mark Antony they debated on a 45-centimeter mattress of rose petals.

The rose was the flower of love par excellence: offering a bouquet of roses did not usually go unpunished — and still the best Spanish festival, Sant Jordi, is summarized in the gift of a rose.

But the rose was also, despite appearances, an emblem of war—as in the War of the Roses, England, 1455, between the Yorks and their white rose and the Lancasters and their red rose.

And, so many centuries later, it was the Rosicrucians—mystical and secret—or the “white roses”—those German students beheaded for plotting against Hitler—or even socialism.

But there is no pink like the color pink—nor abandonment so great and so fortunate.

For a long time things were disgustingly clear: light blue was the color of boys, pink was the color of girls.

It was invented, they say, a couple of centuries ago, by French orphanages to differentiate their pupils, but even so the fashion caught on, it became an order.

And it had to be respected: when the sex of the babies could not be predicted—until recently—the cautious proto-grandmothers armed themselves with booties and dressing gowns of both colors, just in case.

And the others close to her expected her to show off her gender so they could give her clothes that complied with the code: light blue for them, a celebration;

rose for them, a consolation.

They, at some point, stopped being light blue, but they remained pink for many years: their aprons, their toys, their clothes were pink;

His world was pink.

In that rare cast, pink was synonymous with woman and woman meant home, sweetness, submission, care, acceptance of a role that left them outside of everything that could be considered serious.

Rosa was a woman in the most decorative and helpful aspect of the word;

Pink was a woman when being a woman meant not counting, not thinking, not creating, not directing, submitting to the sky blue that had already turned dark blue.

That's why there was "pink press", those media that profit from envy by telling gossip about neighbors who will never be neighbors, and "pink novels" where love was an English cream;

That's why the Nazis marked men who did not want to be dark blue with a pink triangle.

Life in pink seemed to be stored in the most nerdy attic, but who knows.

Now there are attempts to appropriate pink—

Barbie

, the movie, for example—as if all that had not happened, as if pink girls were on the same level as superheroes or zombies, but it was, it existed, and I don't know if still exists.

I tell you: when I started writing these words I was very curious to know if pink—and the word pink—still occupied any remnant of that corny place that it had for so long, if there are women who refuse to dress in pink so as not to be those women, If there are men who miss him, if he is still something of what he was.

And, reading about it, I found that pink and its modulations lead a powerful movement: 17,700,000 times someone searched on TikTok for the

hashtag

#coquette,

the current pink.

The “Coquette movement” is women who claim their right to be pink, to dress as girls or bowties, to reject the idea that, to achieve more equality, they must dress up as men.

They have, of course, their reasons, and to reaffirm them they dress up as girls from other times, as courtesans of Marie Antoinette, as chocolates.

It is coherent: in these times, criticism of the present is not usually a proposal for the future but rather a return to some past.

Pink, let's say, and

coquette

.

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