Becoming Pink
My dance with the Pink Masked Woman was my access point into a side of my feminine that had been curled into a ball, rolling from place to place. My soul dampened every time I revoked Pink. Every time I didn’t talk back, every moment I was left feeling like my entire soul was being dragged through a pit of nails because I was dismissed, peered upon, gawked or leered at. In The Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir states that “it is because femininity means alterity and inferiority that its revelation is met with shame.” This encapsulated my experience of wanting to rid myself of Pink until I learned of its magic.
A year into my connection to Pink, I was drawn to reading Maureen Murdock’s novel The Heroine’s Journey (1990) which highlights the tension between the societal pressure of masculine values and a search for feminine wholeness. Reading it opened up feelings I had been carrying for years and validated the journey I was on. Murdock outlines the heroine’s journey as follows: first, a separation from the feminine and masculine; then, a submersion and descent into the goddess; finally, when reached, the introduction of the dark feminine and the positive masculine. Pink, chosen as an expression of my wholeness, is my own world where all is mine.
When I think of Pink, I see myself in my childhood room: spinning in circles beneath a pink princess canopy, feet sinking into a pink rug, hands brushing against my pink chair. That version of Pink lives somewhere soft in my memory, a slice of girlhood I hold close. But eventually, a day before my sixteenth birthday, I withdrew from the masculine and feminine, and the Pink washed away. De Beauvoir describes how “whether she is more or less prepared for [puberty], she foresees in these changes a finality that rips her from her self; thus hurled into a vital cycle that goes beyond the moment of her own existence, she senses a dependence that dooms her to man, child, and tomb.”
The mothers who graced my life left, never to be seen again.
The fathers became a ruse of performed masculinity.
In this colourless world I felt a rush, becoming aware of myself but feeling lost in my identity. Not long after my nineteenth birthday, I moved to the city, I got my own keys. The safety that I felt, coupled with regular therapy, gave me a foundation to find my true self. A year in, I tried EMDR, a type of therapy helping to process trauma. It vividly reopened memories of my childhood self; that pink rug, my love of dance. Murdock describes how when we have “severed ourselves as spiritual daughters to the patriarchy, there is an urgent yearning to reconnect with the feminine, whether that be the Goddess, the Mother, or her own little girl within.” I sought to find all three, and when I laid myself down in my Pink, I found they were all there, waiting for me to drift back into myself. To become Pink is not to make all things in your life pink; it is a way of connecting with what already exists within. For me, accessing these parts of myself allows “the mysteries of the feminine realm to appear in her dreams; in synchronistic events; in her poetry, art, and dance.” (Murdock, 1990)
I gorge myself on red, juicy fruits that taste like my desire to be seen; mountains of cream-filled desserts that melt on my tongue and feel like my love. I sit at this table and look at the glorious feast of my life. A large pink cake sits at its centre, reminding me of the one I made for myself on my twentieth birthday. It billowed with frills and was caked in icing. I ate and ate and ate it all up. By the end, I did not feel hollow, distraught, or contemplative. I felt safe, knowing my body and my ability to trust my inner feminine would always lead me back to this table, to sit at my feast and eat it all up!
When I came to realise Pink, and exercised all my efforts to adorn my life in Pink, a small, yet endearing, voice hummed in the back of my mind, telling me to perform, but for what stage? To create, but with what art? To cry, but for whom? To dance, but in what shoes? It grew louder. The more I was pulled to my inner feminine, the more I felt what I actually wanted to become. I was able to cry for myself, and for the girl who lost Pink so many years ago. To allow the dark feminine to finally release in a flurry of embers. To create art not because I could sew, perform, or dance, but because I trusted my own instinctual magic. The trust in my body, my sexuality, my sadness, my spirit, and my thoughts. I finally fell into the pink rug in my room. I smelt the cheap perfume I used to make fairy potions. I danced away the strangeness of the day and chased a past version of myself I had once turned my back on.
Now I see the masked figure I have been dreaming of meeting. Her Pink is wrapped around her body, physically inextricable, taut enough to consume both what she is and what she is becoming. The Pink Masked Woman is the Goddess, The Mother, and my own little girl within. She was dreamt in the mystery of the feminine realm. Pink rests on my epidermis, lightly fluttering along the hairs of my arms, contorted through tulle, beads, and ribbons.
She emerged from the water, as I sat on the shore, every shade of Pink, a gentle glistening on the surface of the water. Starlight trickled between each wave, twinkling brightly as it came and went, reaching the shore and retreating again. The tide mirrored the rising emotions of pushing yourself away, only to glide back into yourself.
We met one another on the shore. She was Pink, and her mask, the same as her skin, reflected starlight as her body rippled through the water, droplets did not cling to the ribbons that fell from her fingertips, but melted into the fabric. Illuminated by the moonlight, she reflected all of my dark and beautiful feminine, a physical embodiment of what Pink had felt like. She held my hands and told me that whatever I wanted to become, I could. She took me under the waves, and we spent time getting to know one another. I watched her move beneath the surface, her pink strands falling weightlessly behind her. Her body flowed and danced, and she gestured for me to do the same.
We danced together the way we had when I was younger, in that Pink room. We fell to the floor laughing at how ridiculous we could be. She did not show me anything I did not already know, but she finally allowed me to release my largest cry. The safety felt angelic. I trusted the journey that had brought me to actualising her. I felt the pain I believed I had to carry fall away from my body. She took me back up for air. I sat back on the shore and watched her stare back at me from the water.
We took one final glance, knowing she would continue to guide me, knowing we had finally learned how to look at one another without hurting. I watched her slip back under the water. I had finally felt my separation of self stitch back together. I saw dreams I had sewn up, embroidered into her skin.
As I watched the starlight flicker across the water and rise up onto my body, I no longer felt dampened. My feminine had been found, my emblem of Pink, my own fantasy of the feminine, the wholeness I sought feels, finally, whole.