What is it about men and pink clothes? As soon as a man reveals a liking for them, the rumours start to fly that he's a bit too keen on musical theatre, if you know what I mean.
The new Oxford English Dictionary even defines pink to mean 'of or associated with homosexuals', as in 'the pink pound'.
The latest victim of this colour prejudice is Peter Spencer, Sky's political correspondent - the one with the mane of white hair, given to expansive hand gestures - who often appears on telly at the weekends.
The new Oxford English Dictionary even defines pink to mean 'of or associated with homosexuals', as in 'the pink pound'.
The latest victim of this colour prejudice is Peter Spencer, Sky's political correspondent - the one with the mane of white hair, given to expansive hand gestures - who often appears on telly at the weekends.
He likes to wear a cloak over pink shirts and ties, and even has a pink BMW, and two pink houses, in north London and Cornwall. Yet Spencer is very much a ladies' man.
The camp connotations come from the fact that for much of the 20th century pink has been considered a girl's colour, as favoured by Barbie. But if you look back a bit further, it was considered strong and manly, while blue (associated with the Virgin Mary) was seen as delicate and feminine.
To this day, the strapping male rowing teams at Westminster School wear a fondant-fancy coloured kit; legend has it that they had to beat their arch-rivals Eton in a race in 1837 for the privilege of wearing the fashionable colour.
The link between pink and ebullient masculinity has, in some quarters, persisted. When I was a banker in the mid-Nineties at merchant bank Flemings, I was told on my training course not to wear a pink shirt for fear of looking too flash.
In other words, the opposite of the pretty-in-pink, girly-man cliche held true: a little splash of pink was thought far too red-blooded and testosterone-rich.
(I wonder what they're wearing in the City these days - something in an eye-catching shade of sackcloth and ashes perhaps?)
The same robustly macho associations go for pink handkerchiefs and socks; and I mean screaming bubblegum pink, rather than the dark red, discreet version.
Lurid pink accessories imply a certain type of devil-may-care dandiness - and that's Rex Harrison/Prince Philip/Errol Flynn dandiness, by the way, not the John Inman/Noel Coward variety.
The camp connotations come from the fact that for much of the 20th century pink has been considered a girl's colour, as favoured by Barbie. But if you look back a bit further, it was considered strong and manly, while blue (associated with the Virgin Mary) was seen as delicate and feminine.
To this day, the strapping male rowing teams at Westminster School wear a fondant-fancy coloured kit; legend has it that they had to beat their arch-rivals Eton in a race in 1837 for the privilege of wearing the fashionable colour.
The link between pink and ebullient masculinity has, in some quarters, persisted. When I was a banker in the mid-Nineties at merchant bank Flemings, I was told on my training course not to wear a pink shirt for fear of looking too flash.
In other words, the opposite of the pretty-in-pink, girly-man cliche held true: a little splash of pink was thought far too red-blooded and testosterone-rich.
(I wonder what they're wearing in the City these days - something in an eye-catching shade of sackcloth and ashes perhaps?)
The same robustly macho associations go for pink handkerchiefs and socks; and I mean screaming bubblegum pink, rather than the dark red, discreet version.
Lurid pink accessories imply a certain type of devil-may-care dandiness - and that's Rex Harrison/Prince Philip/Errol Flynn dandiness, by the way, not the John Inman/Noel Coward variety.
Full-throttle pink outfits, however, are best left to Hollywood pretty boys such as Brad Pitt.
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