Let's play a game, shall we? First, find a pencil. Did you find one? Congratulations, you won! Just kidding, that's not the game. \nTake the pencil, shimmy your eyes down to the list of objects below and circle the one that doesn't belong.
-- Monster truck\n-- Penis \n-- Pink shirt\n-- Bloody deer carcass
Which one did you circle? If you circled PINK SHIRT, you pass the stereotype test with flying colors! In the list of stereotypical male objects, you probably thought the pink shirt didn't belong. But why? \n"Give me one legitimate reason why men shouldn't like pink," I asked my friend Lindsay the other day after she mocked the pink shirt I was wearing. "Because," she shot back, "only GIRLS wear pink shirts." Ouch. There I was standing in a 100 percent cotton pink T-shirt and feeling 100 percent humiliated. It hurt.\nUnfortunately in response to wearing a pink shirt, I encountered many shirt racists that day. Jeer as they may, however, I refuse to give up the color pink (I'm like the Rosa Parks of fabric). Instead, I have decided to fight back by imitating a famous group active in the civil rights movement. \nIn the 1960s, a number of protesting African-American males started a group called the Black Panthers in an attempt to achieve equal rights. So, as the self-titled founder of the Pink Panthers (men who wear pink shirts), I have written this article to promote equal colored-shirt rights for all students at IU. Because, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., people should not be judged by the color of their graphic tees, but by the content of their character.\nIn the macho-man world, the color pink is considered taboo. The only pink substance men are allowed to come in contact with is Pepto-Bismol, only because it is used to soothe our explosively masculine diarrhea. Pink shirts are generally regarded as too feminine for guys to use. It's totally sexist.\nI tried to convince Lindsay of this later in our conversation. I bounced back from her clothing insults demanding that she tell me why I shouldn't wear pink. All she could come up with was, "Just because. I think it's wrong."\n"Maybe it is," I responded calmly. "Or ... maybe that's just the way you've been socialized. Perhaps your parochial view is no more than a preconceived notion of ignorance ingrained by a society that discriminates against homosexuality because of the deeply-rooted Puritanical and Christian influence on American culture." \n"Shut up, you're gay."\nYet another drawback of guys wearing pink ... someone will always ask you if you're gay, to which I always respond (stealing a line from the late, great, Richard Pryor): "I don't know. Why don't you bend over and let's find out!" That usually shuts them up.\nI don't know why pink is considered such a feminine color in the first place. The only things I can think of that are naturally pink are pigs and erasers, neither of which have exceptionally vaginal qualities. Pink, after all, is nothing more than a mixture of red and white, two of the most patriotic colors on our revered American flag. So if you make fun of a pink shirt, you're really making fun of America. And that makes you a terrorist. \nThe problem is that our society has such a skewed perception of what it means to be a man. Despite common belief, it has nothing to do with sports, spitting or even heavy grunting. It has to do with having integrity and courage, including the balls to wear whatever you please. Because it's not the color on the outside, but your true colors on the inside that count. Color is irrelevant. King. believed this. He had a dream. Now I, too, have a dream. I have a dream that one day men will be free ... to wear pink at last! Wear pink at last! Thank God almighty, wear pink at last.
