Fuchsia is my color. I say that using the aura-like definition of the word. It has to do with me being a passionate, outspoken person, which in colorgenics terms means my personality lives somewhere on the red side of the spectrum. If I could see my aura, which I have not been clairvoyantly trained to do, I imagine it would be just slightly pinker than fire truck red, for no particular reason. I just prefer FF1493 to FF0000.

Throughout most of high school, my hair varied between patterns of Fudge’s Raspberry Beret and Manic Panic’s Fuschia [sic] Shock. I still have a couple of bottles rolling around in my bathroom drawer. I had highlights and stripes, and sometimes I just dumped whatever extra dye I had all over my head. As far as surface-level reputations went, I was largely recognized for having “pink hair.” If Suicide Girls were around back then, I would have followed their examples with a passion.

It comes as a surprise to most, then, that “pink,” or any such shade, is not my favorite color. It’s true I think it’s a great highlight color, but I feel just as strongly about lime green. (I also had green and blue hair, just FYI.) When it comes to favorite colors, I think of color combos as opposed to singular shades. And if I was hard-pressed to pick out just one hue? Well, I’m fairly certain it would depend on my mood and that it wouldn’t always be pink, fuchsia, or magenta – Even though it would be the easiest to choose, at least based on my hair dyeing history.

My hesitance toward being a pink fanatic comes from an overthought, overprocessed belief that pink is annoying. People see pink and they think of Betsey Johnson leopard print purses lined with magenta piping or female-targeted sites entirely overdone in shades of pink or gaggles of stupid girls in F-Me pumps and porn star makeup. They think of vapid girls who whine and bitch and moan about stupid things, never once having lifted a French manicured finger. They think of privilege and superficial pledges to feminism that are overshadowed by otherwise impressive dedication to material acquisition. Bubble dresses. Obnoxiously oversized metallic bags. Un-bedhead bedhead.

It’s the girls at Ruby Skye. It’s the trust fund babies who get college degrees but, in all academic evaluations, didn’t really. It’s the girls for whom everything is paid for. It’s unsufferably prissy and obnoxiously perky. It makes me avoid certain shelves at Borders, where rows and rows of magenta spines hint at really annoying chick lit. I call all this weird not-really-progressive-or-independent-feminism “magentaism.”

And it’s also homophobic yet metrosexual frat boys who like to pop the collars of their polos.

(And also an entire unnecessary line at Victoria’s Secret.)

All in all, it seems that pink means privileged. And I can only take so much of that.

Despite my own well-taken-care-of background, I would much rather be described in earth tones.