Pink Means Feminine

Beauty like a rose, adorned in rosy pink.

For many modern cultures, the color pink has become the color meaning femininity, in all its forms. This means that the more graceful and elegant a woman is, wearing pink is very likely to be paired with this in fiction. It's also why it's thought girls appreciate pink things more than other colors.

The form of the pink is best done with elegant clothing, and even if the lady surrounds herself with pink (like the walls on her bedroom and the furniture), but even something "manly" being colored pink would count for this trope. Heck, even a dress that's not normally pink, like a Fairytale Wedding Dress, could be either colored pink (for being non-traditional, but still feminine), or have pink trimmings (usually in the form of a bouquet with pink flowers).

This is actually Newer Than They Think. Since pink is a tone of red, and as red is the color of blood, pink was a masculine color some time ago (blue was actually seen as feminine), and still is in some parts of the world.

And these days, it's controversial, as a way to insist women have to be feminine. A Tomboy will refuse to wear pink. On the other hand, this trope is why Real Men Wear Pink is named so, despite not requiring that color.

By the way, this can include any shade of pink, even those that cross with other colors (like fuchsia, a purple and pink color).

A Sub-Trope of Tertiary Sexual Characteristics.

A Super-Trope to:

• Pink Girl, Blue Boy (a boy and girl explicitly wear their respective colors)
• Pink Is for Sissies (mocking a guy for wearing pink)
• Pink Product Ploy
• Princesses Prefer Pink
• Rose-Haired Girl

A Sister Trope to Graceful Ladies Like Purple (and can overlap with colors like fuchsia), True-Blue Femininity.

Compare Long Hair Is Feminine, Woman in White, Lady in Red, Girls Love Stuffed Animals, Hair Decorations, All Girls Like Ponies, Pimped-Out Dress, Princess Phase.

Examples (not covered in the sub tropes):

Anime and Manga

• Wedding Peach has the color appearing in several places, from the weapons to Transformation Sequences (and that's not even taking Momoko's hair into account).
• Played With throughout the Lyrical Nanoha franchise: the title character herself, a rather feminine young woman, has pink as the default color of her magic... which she usually uses to deliver a world of pain to her prospective friends and family. Then, we have Signum, a Lady of War who sports a luscious waist-long pink hair... and is widely regarded as the manliest character in the series. Lastly, Caro Ru Lushe, whose hair and magic are pink... is a girly girl (and one of the most obviously heterosexual ones in this Les Yay-laden franchise, to boot), merrily playing this trope straight.
• As a "girl power" series, Pretty Cure loves the color pink, and the main girl of each series will always have some pink in her outfit. Notably, the girl in pink isn't always a girly girl—while that was the case in more recent seasons, the earlier seasons and the latest one have the tomboy wear pink instead.
  • • Blatantly invoked in the initial flyer for Suite Pretty Cure, which went out of its way to point out that both mains wore pink in their Cure outfits, putting "girls' favorite color on full display".
• In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, each girl has a different Magical Girl costume with its own color scheme that matches with their hair and eyes. Naturally, Madoka, easily the nicest and most vulnerable of the main cast, has pink as her main color.
• In Sailor Moon, the title character usually wears red, white, blue, and yellow in her fuku, however her "aura" color appears to be pink, as whenever she's using an attack, pink is usually her main color. Her bow is also pink in the musicals and the live-action drama. Sailor Chibi Moon's fuku always has pink, not to mention that her hair is pink.
• Dola, the leader of the Sky Pirates in Castle in The Sky, likes pink.
• Ichigo Momomiya/Mew Ichigo, the leader of the Mew Mews from Tokyo Mew Mew.

Film

• Mean Girls. The Plastics have these rules surrounding the color pink.
• Legally Blonde: Elle wears pink to stand out from the rest of the crowd and to emphasis her femininity.
• Sharpay Evans of High School Musical is a drama queen and high school diva who wants everything to be fabulous which results in a lot of pink.
• Glinda's outfit in The Wizard of Oz.
• In Suzie Q, Suzie wears a pink evening dress, and her mother comments that she finally got her daughter to wear fancy clothes.

Literature

• Delores Umbridge of Harry Potter surrounds herself with pink, to try to cover up her Jerkass nature.
  • As well, when the Weasley twins open their shop in Diagon Alley, they have a range of items marketed to girls which are all pink.
• April Devereux from Half Moon Investigations had a "Pink Club", which turned out to be a cover for a club determined to get girls a good education and will go to any measure to do so.
• In Paranormalcy by Kiersten White, Action Girl protagonist Evie has a rhinestone-studded pink taser named Tasey, wears killer pink boots, and refuses to carry a knife until she is given one that is, you guessed it, pink.
• Addressed in Discworld book Making Money where Adora Belle Dearheart says that every girl of approximately eight years of age loves the color pink. This is used to rule out that the Cabinet of Curiosity at Unseen University could have been designed for a little girl, since it contains nothing pink.
• The books of Angelina Ballerina, and its cartoon adaptations, put Angelina in a pink tutu.
• Cindy, Chris and Cathy's very girly adopted daughter in the Dollanganger series, notes that "I love pink, really adore pink," and has a bathroom decorated in pink with gold and green accents.

Live-Action TV

• The Chick in Super Sentai shows would usually wear pink until recently (which also influenced similar shows, such as GoLion, and any parodies, such as the Axem Rangers of Super Mario RPG). Carried over into Power Rangers, of course, where Pink Rangers usually get pegged as the Girly Girl.
  • Played with in Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger. The gimmick of copying previous Rangers already mixes up the Gendered Outfit thing, but in the Gavan crossover movie, the entire team briefly uses pink Ranger Keys.
  • Played with in Power Rangers Mystic Force, where Vida the Pink Ranger is about as un-feminine as you can get.
• In the Firefly episode "Shindig", Kaylee wears a pink Pimped-Out Dress as part of her Princess for a Day.

Professional Wrestling

• In WWE the original Women's title had a pink strap on it, that the new FCW Divas' title also is modeled after. The current WWE Divas' Championship is also designed pink and the Divas' logo is pink. As far as I know the only diva who has not worn pink on her ring gear is Michelle McCool.
• In a way Natalya Neidheart defied this trope whenever she wore pink as it was a reference to her Hart family lineage, whose colours are pink and black. So Nattie never comes across as feminine when she's seen wearing pink ring gear.
• When they have to promote a Diva's match with a graphic, there's always some pink in the background and the text is normally pink as well.

Toys

• The body of the original toy release of Princess Celestia in the Hasbro toy line was pink colored and not white as in the show, apparently to appeal to little girls. It was however changed when the bronies complained.

Video Games

• The pirate captain Clara in Skies of Arcadia wears pink.
• Mass Effect introduces the character Ashley Williams in a pink uniform. Since it's a uniform, and Femshep doesn't wear pink, the color probably indicated unit affiliation rather than gender or fashion choice, and Ashley's lost unit all wore pink.
• Amy, the first playable female in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, doesn't wear pink. She is pink. Wherever possible she also incorporates pink into her vehicles and stage design.
• The entire menu and user interface of Persona 3 is changed from blue to pink in the PSP version's female protagonist route.
• Claire in the second Puppet Princess game, and Etoile's sprite in the first game.
• Bad Girl of No More Heroes wears pink, but given her Badass nature, this seems to be just to keep up her Sweet Lolita image.
• Vanille's pink top in Final Fantasy XIII.
• Maria's dress in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood.
• Annie in Wild Guns wears a pink dress by default.
• Virginia's dress in Wild ARMs 3 is purple in artwork, but fuchsia in-game.
• Natalie's pink armor in Radiata Stories.
• Momo Karuizawa in Rival Schools.
• In addition to Peach, the Super Mario Bros. series has Wendy Koopa and Toadette.
• Josephine of Suikoden V.
• Kairi in Kingdom Hearts II.
• The Queen of all Cosmos in Katamari Damacy.
• Sakura of Sakura Taisen wears pink in her uniform.
• Princess Zelda wears pink in a few of her incarnations, most notably Ocarina of Time.
• Flora, Professor Layton's adopted daughter, prefers this palette. She's first seen in a formal portrait, wearing a red velvet gown; later she wears a white dress with dark pink accents, and in the second and third games of the series she wears a peach-pink dress with dark pink or red accessories.
• Some ladies in Tekken wear pink.
  • Ling Xiaoyu's outfit in 5 is mostly pink, save for the white shorts and white feathers.
  • Alisa Bosconovitch's outfit is half pink half blue.

Webcomics

• In Wonderella, Wonderita turns down an offer of a Ring of Power because it's not pink.
• In Angel Moxie, Alex's Mini-Dress of Power is primarily pink (with touches of white and light blue).
• This is true for Myari of Ears for Elves, along with hearts, swirls, flowers, and possibly a butterfly.^[1]

Web Original

• Neopets changed the Altador Cup team colours of Faerieland from pink and purple to green and purple/pink to symbolise the land's recent landing (it was airborne previously), but also to make it less of a "target group 5-year-girls" team.
• Commented on by The Nostalgia Chick in her video about Distaff Counterparts a couple of times.

"And she's paaaaaaaaaaaaaaank!"

• When The Nostalgia Critic was writing on his bed like a teenage girl, we saw for the first time that his bedroom has pink curtains.

Webcomics

• In Homestuck, played straight with Roxy and Feferi, who are both pretty girly, but averted with Meenah, who is actually a tomboyish Punk.

Western Animation

• In The Transformers, Arcee the female Transformer was pink.
  • Downplayed Trope in Transformers Prime, in which Arcee is mainly blue with pink highlights.
• Robert Mandell's best-known creations Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers and Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders were distinct contrasts on this trope. In the first, Niko was only shoved into a pink dress once (while she and Doc were heading to a Bad Guy Bar), protesting all the while. The latter cartoon was designed for a girl's toy line, and virtually everything was pastel, with the lead character rarely seen in any other color than pink.
• Larke and Bianca of Beverly Hills Teens have a bunch of pink things, including Bianca's Limited Wardrobe outfit.
• Amy from Futurama wears a pink, midriff-baring sweatsuit a lot. However, "Into the Wild Green Yonder" reveals that it's actually a boy's sweatsuit.
• Quinn from Daria wears pink in many of her outfits.
• Ashley A. from Recess usually has pink in all of her outfits.
• Dot from Animaniacs wears a pink skirt.
• The chipettes in Alvin and The Chipmunks have a lighter color scheme than the chipmunks, Brittany wearing pink.
• Charlotte LaBouff from The Princess and the Frog is obsessed with the color pink, since she never grew out of her Princess Phase, and because Princesses Prefer Pink.
• Mulan's matchmaker dress is colored pink, in which she is forced to wear against her will.
• Pink is a common color for Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck of the Classic Disney Shorts.
• Sarah of Dinosaucers wears pink tights.
• Megara from |Hercules wears a light pink dress with a slit on the side with a dark pink sash around the waist.
• Jean in the 90s X-Men had a few pink outfits, like a pink evening mini dress, and in the Fairy Tale episode, her fictional Princess counterpart wore purple and pink.
• When Darkwing Duck traveled to an Alternate Universe, Gosalyn's counterpart was feminine compared to the regular Gosalyn's tomboy, and she wore a pink, frilly dress.
• Penelope of The Perils of Penelope Pitstop.
• Jessie of The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest gets pink clothing, whether a shirt or Stylish Protection Gear.
• Dakota from Total Drama Revenge of the Island wears a pink top, pink flats, and magenta pants as her default outfit.
• Clara from The Nutcracker Prince has a pink bow and pink fur-trimmed winter coat.
• Kim in The Care Bears Movie has a pink hair bow and sweater.

Real Life

• Angie Harmon wore a pink Pimped-Out Dress with a feather skirt to the 2011 SAG awards.
• There's an anti-pink campaign run by some people who are sick of girls being "'pinked' to death". Pink Stinks Here is a Synopsis of it.
• An Exploited Trope use of this is making pink the color for breast cancer research. Although it's not an exclusively female disease, is has helped in getting attention for cancer treatment.
• This trope is explained here.
• Jayne Mansfield loved this color, and had a lot of her house colored pink, and even had furs dyed pink.

1. ↑ Elon just wrote an essay.