Pink: Not For Girls Only

Pink is the color of Breast Cancer Awareness month . . . and the traditional color of products targeted at girls, newborns through teens. My earlier post about Legos Friends shows that even plastic blocks are aiming at the girl market with pink (and other colors beloved by little girls).

Fujitsu Japan has just announced a line of pink cell phones for--you guessed it!--girls. The phones and accessories are cute in the extreme.

However, as blogger Philip Berne writes on SlashDot, pink isn't necessarily for girls. His young son is mad for pink, and he himself has a pink iPod mini that he likes a lot. By day, Berne works for Samsung; by night, he blogs about tech topics.

Berne's complaint is that many people find pink appealing, but stereotyped marketing types think it's for girls only. Berne has a solution, and I agree it's worth a try:

"The answer is to start making and marketing more pink devices aimed at men. Or, more generally, make pink devices that everyone will like. Treat pink like the appealing color that it is, and not some super-inflated symbol of gender and sexuality."