The Pink Gillet

Hi Everyone

Firstly, I want to say a big thank you to all for you for taking the time last week to watch Roxane Gay's video, as well as for your comments, kind works and emojis. I was very happy to see that so many of you were interested, as well as that my choice of video generated a range of emotions.

For my second post, I would like to share with you something personal, something that happened to me very recently and made me think quite a lot…

So, here goes.

I was working from home yesterday and because I was a bit chilly in the morning, decided to wear my company gillet, the one that was kindly gifted to all of us for Christmas, the one for which I chose pink. On my first Teams call of the day, I got instant reactions by some colleagues about my gillet, not because of how nice it is, or how I looked wearing it or why I was wearing a gillet indoors, or even for looking so miserably cold…but because of its actual colour. The comments came throughout the day during all calls and from a variety of people and it was a long day…

"You look very girlie today", "I never had you as a pink girl", "Wow! Pink?! That is brave" etc. etc. There were many more, but I think you get the general picture.

After my day of calls was finally over and I poured myself a glass of red while making dinner, I kept going over the reactions of my colleagues in my head….and realised that I was sad and silently very angry. Even though my logic knew that the remarks were not meant to spite or hurt me in any way, they still made me feel uncomfortable and I found myself throughout the day, feeling like I had to justify my pinkness.

When the company email came out before Christmas about the corporate gift, I went with the pink option, simply because I didn"t like the shade of blue on offer. If there had been a black option, I think you can all safely guess that I would have gone for that, but between the blue and the pink options, I chose pink, because I liked the colour more. As simple as that.

I spent the rest of my evening thinking that these are people who I have known for almost a year (since I joined the company), are not sexist or biased in any way and didn"t mean to sound offensive or harmful; yet they made me question my choice…and once again, I realised that gender and unconscious bias are a lot more engrained in all of us, way more than we may realise or want to accept.

As I drifted to sleep last night, I caught myself wondering…Had I known pre-Christmas about the reactions I would receive, would I still have chosen pink? Or even worse, how many of us may have intentionally chosen blue, to avoid feeling like they may have to defend their choice?

With that, I wish you a lovely weekend and will leave you with how I wish I had responded to the various comments yesterday – not just about defending my choice, or the colour itself, but about standing up for whatever I believe, choose and am passionate for.