Pink

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit.

I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right.

However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of this plan. They did pretty much everything they could to refuse and make it known that they did not want to wear a pink article of clothing (I believe retching sounds were involved). In the end, the guys did not end up wearing pink, so it ended up being little more than a thought experiment.

Jumping ahead a few years, I had to attend a friend's wedding. On a whim, I decided to see if the pink shirt would work. There really wasn't any real reason for this, other than I figured I'd give it a shot. And when my date, the Mild Ex, said that one of the dresses she was considering wearing was pink, I figured it was a sign. So, I decided to move past the thought experiment stage of this idea to the actual execution phase. I went out and bought myself a pink dress shirt.

By now, regular readers of this blog will know that between my friends and family, someone was bound to tease me about this turn of events. My sister, for example, got a glimpse of the shirt during a Skype session. She basically said "ew" in the most creative way possible and she used the word "flaming" at one point, so it was clear that she was not a fan. For the record, the shirt was not all that bright or flamboyant, but she insisted that her description was apt. She would also later tell me that this one purchase had made it so that we both owned the same number of pink clothes. I suspect she may have been just a tad biased.

Still, the funniest thing to come out of all of this were the comments made as positive reinforcement to my latest foray into fashion. My mom was the first to defend this purchase. She said, "hell, if it's gay, just be gay for a day." It wasn't even the fact that she told her straight son to be gay for a day that cracked me up so badly, it was the cavalier attitude with which she delivered this message. She just nonchalantly threw out this piece of advice with the same tone as if she'd suggested that I order a different entree at a restaurant. Secondly, I was laughing about all of this with the Mild Ex, and she told me, "well, you're comfortable with your sexuality, and you got me, so I got your back." I never thought about it that way, but I was pretty amused to find out that I had a new addition to my small army of friends willing to defend me.

And to think, all of this came about because of a single shirt. Can you imagine what would happen if I bought TWO purple shirts?