Can men wear pink? You’d be hard-pressed to find someone nowadays who would say no. In fact, pink – at least the invariable shade of safe salmon pink – is such a staple for guys that I find myself reluctant to wear it because it is just too #menswear. Yes, a muted pink button-down can look nice in summer, but if you really want to think pink you can and perhaps really ought to take it so much further than that. Unless, of course, you are really very committed to the middle-class dad normcore aesthetic that those faded pink chinos will give you.

Even with all the progress we’ve made, the gendered weight of the colour pink in its many forms cannot be ignored. It is culturally significant as essentially the marker of the female; we dress babies in either pink or blue to ascribe a gender to an otherwise indistinguishable cute and podgy mini-human. The current use of pink in mainstream menswear does nothing to question gendered ideas, it has simply co-opted a very limited range of shades and brought them into the fold of what is seen as ‘for men’.

In nineteenth-century Europe, men’s uniforms were often red, so young boys’ clothes, particularly among higher social classes, were typically made in pink as if to represent a watered-down, childish version of the red their fathers wore. It is always a question of social context, and the ways in which we gender clothing can change rapidly such that, from the 1940s up until the modern day, pink has overwhelmingly suggested the feminine. It is by recognising this that dressing in pink as a man can become interesting – worn in certain ways, it can be a knowing nod to the busting of gender norms.
In the music world recently, we have seen exactly this kind of allusion. The male producers Sophie and A. G. Cook have used pink in bold ways when dressing the all-female cast of artificial popstar personalities who are the face of their own work. They are the creative forces behind the enigmatic music group PC Music, where they have essentially created their own genre of uncanny electronic hyper-pop which tends to take received ideas and themes from popular culture, such as gender and femininity in consumerism, and stretch them to an extreme.

One of the voices of their music, Hannah Diamond, has released a song entitled Pink and Blue, where these colours almost become the nicknames for her and her male love interest respectively. Diamond almost always appears in shiny and sparkly fabrics, in bright candy pink tones that typify her gender. Most importantly, this is all under the creative direction of men, who could not ordinarily dress this way themselves like she can without anyone batting an eyelid.

But, in modern Western society, the politics of wearing pink as a man is even more complex, extending beyond a simple defiance of the assumed gender rules of colour. To be willing to wear bold pinks as a man today is to take an overt stand against oppression and to refute those same existing ideas about gender roles and sexuality. It may be just a colour, but this is an aspect of history which the thinking fashionable man cannot ignore when he wears pink.

So, guys, with that in mind, you might be wondering how to actually pull off the pink IRL. Stick to one statement piece in a bold shade – this isn’t any less daring, it will simply make the one splash of pink even more striking when set against basic neutrals. Plain or printed tees in dark but vibrant pinks, or even in another main colour but with neon pink graphic prints, are increasingly easy to find on the high street. If you’re looking for an easy daytime look, throw on a plain sweatshirt in a light candy pink. These don’t need to be fancy because the colour does all the work for you.

Whichever way you decide to take it, remember that wearing pink as a guy says some important things, so don’t shy away from this by playing it safe.