He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brony: Why I No Longer Hate Pink

It took me twenty-nine years to discover that I didn’t hate pink.

When I was a girl growing up, pink was the enemy. It invariably designated toys I did not want to play with, clothing I didn’t want to wear, and games that bored me. I was happier when I could switch out the few pink, girly things I had for replacements more in line with my own tastes. Instead of a pink dress, a black suit. Instead of a Barbie, craft stuff and Game Boy games. I didn’t want to dress up my dolls to find which outfits looked best, go around the board to figure out who my dream date was, or wear a skirt.

Even now that I’m an adult, pink is pretty much the only colour that doesn’t appear in my wardrobe, except when it comes in combo packs, and even then, it’s reserved for gym clothes. My grad-school (yes, grad school, no missing ‘E’) suitemates used to tease me by pretending they’d arranged for me to get a pink DS for my birthday.

I’d like to say that having friends who love pink things, stereotypically “girly” things, and flowers and sparkles and rainbows helped change my opinion, but I don’t think I can. Don’t get me wrong: I love my friends, and I love that pink things made them happy, because I love when my friends are happy. And sometimes I do start to like stuff because I associate it with my friends being happy and then learn to enjoy it myself. But unlike beer, fancy cooking, and mainstream video games, pink didn’t start to appeal to me when the people around me liked it.

I’d also like to say that catching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic on Netflix this winter changed my mind, but that’s not it, either, even though I enjoyed the show.

Instead, it was watching Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony. Watching this documentary, about young men and women who describe what appeals to them about My Little Pony, made me realize what I’ve really been feeling all these years.

I don’t hate pink.

It’s just that most things that are marketed in pink take for granted that their audiences like things only because they’re pink.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has a sadly rare mix: it has pretty rainbows, sparkles, ponies, and pink-and-purple. Y’know, “girl stuff.” But it also treats its viewers and characters as complete people with wide-ranging interests.

The six main pony characters have names like Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie, and they do talk about dresses and fashion. But they also deal with running a business, playing sports, and doing epic magic stuff. Oh, and friendship, except by “friendship,” the show means actual social situations that often get solved in ways you might solve them in real life, not just by everyone magically being nice, unselfish people or by people lying to each other in ways that would break any actual friendship irreparably.

The pretty, pink part of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic flies right by me. I’m not interested in what dresses the ponies wear, but neither do I get impatient and wish the show would skip forward. Good movies, TV shows, and books make me interested in things I don’t care about by making me care about characters to whom they matter.

I like W. P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe even though I don’t like baseball. That book sucked me in.

I don’t care about American political machinations, but The Good Wife and The Wire made me care because they’re important to the characters.

The logistics of rebellion bore me, but I loved Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress for pulling me in to its story.

And when I watch Bronies, I see a bunch of adults, male and female, who like what My Little Pony has to offer: the broad-without-being-stereotypes characters, the humour, the respect for the audience, and some of whom, because they care, have learned to like the pink-and-purple-and-sparkles package it comes in.

Because in the end, none of us cares what package a good story comes in, so long as we like what’s inside.

I don’t hate pink. I don’t hate “girl stuff.”

I hate how often they become the camouflage for products and stories that dismiss their audience’s depth.