Thinking Pink
You know the great thing about paydays? You can pay for stuff. Like groceries. And daycare. And if you’re really, really lucky, extras like a new dvd player.
I tried to resurrect the old one. I really did. I cleaned it and whacked it and made burnt offerings to the electronics gods for it (ok, so that was the dinner I forgot was in the oven, but it should still count, right?), but nothing worked. So, it was off to The Superstore for a new one; we can do without a lot of things around here, but easy access to the Disney and Whedon oeuvres isn’t one of them.
It’s kind of funny, actually. I remember back when dvd players were a major electronics purchase–something only the true movie geeks or those with some serious disposable income indulged in. And now, it’s a $25 purchase at the grocery store. And instead of the very serious silver casing, now you can get fun colours!
The one we were getting came in three kicky colours: Bright blue, bubblegum pink, and cherry red. Diva Girl, true to form, immediately began clamouring for the pink one. The Shaolin Toddler was no less emphatic in her desire to bring the blue one home. So, with the wisdom of Solomon, I decreed we were getting the red one. Which really worked out for me; I’m not particularly fond of blue, and while I like pink as much as the next girly girl, I thought maybe it would be a little too cliche for our all female household to indulge in a pink dvd player.
Did I really want to identify us like that? A pink dvd player?
I confess, our home is very…feminine. Not in a lace and ruffles way, but still, the lack of a male presence is obvious in our decor. It shows in the dangly beads on the light fixture in my bedroom, in the vibrant stripes on my comforter, in my polkadot kleenex boxes. It’s in my Anne Taintor kitchen, and the sunflowers on my livingroom walls. My translucent curtains, my colourful striped glasses, my picture frames, my hugable rug….all of these design choices scream that this is more than a female space, it’s a feminine one.
Not even the Star Wars Potato Heads on my desk, the giant stuffed stegosaurus on the bookshelf, or the Spiderman blanket on Regan’s bed detract from the inherent girlishness of our space–the pink blocks littering the floor, the Barbie house in the livingroom, the ballgowns in the dressup box, and the overabundance of Olsen twins and Disney Princesses filling my dvd shelves make certain of that. Do we really need a pink dvd player, too?
The other stuff–the tutus and the tiaras–are the sort of accidental debris that accumulates when you raise daughters. Unless you are hypervigilant, which I confess I’m not, that sort of stuff just seeps into your toybox. But a pink dvd player, that’s a choice. That’s a conscious statement that we have pink because we are girls and girls have pink. Standing in the middle of The Superstore, using my biblical judgment to mediate The Ladies’ colour dispute, I was actually relieved that they were fighting, that they were giving me an easy out on this one.
And then The Toddler Formerly Known As Zen changed her mind.
Oh well, at least the cute little pink dvd player looks fabulous with my new rug.