Hi! It’s Annie!
I was originally planning on doing a completely different post this week; but every once in a while I stumble back into this unfortunate conversation. And while this conversation has taken many different forms and attacked many different women for different things, a lot of it has stemmed from the question; does pink belong in fantasy? I’ve seen this conversation take place in all types of media and fandom from books to LARPs (Live Action Role Play events) and it honestly drives me crazy. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you might know that I have particular affinity for the color pink. I’m pretty sure I wrote an entire post about it a few years back and it is the color of basically my entire appearance, so you can probably gather that I’m a little biased. The thing is, I can stand to listen to a few men talk about how pink isn’t a natural fantasy color (which is bullshit and I’ll get into why in a little bit), but I will absolutely not stand for it especially when there is bullying of any kind. So we’re just going to jump into why pink absolutely deserves to be in fantasy media and also why the attack on the color pink is actually just a very sexist attack in general. Yes, even in your LARPs.
“But pink wasn’t used in medieval times!”:
I’ve seen this argument all the time and rage just fills my body every time I hear it. Pink is a natural color in nature! Just think about what they might have used from nature to dye clothing at the time. We know that flowers were sometime ground up for things like beauty and skin products, but we also know that berries and other objects with a lot of juice were used for dye. And you might be thinking; “but those are red!” If you’ve ever dyed anything you know that it doesn’t take much to dilute red into pink especially if you’re putting it on something white. We also have tons of medieval paintings that depict the color pink. So we can get rid of this odd notion right away that pink somehow didn’t exist in those times in clothing or in art. Yes, it very much did!
“It removes my immersion!”:
This was an argument specifically used in a particularly popular situation involving a popular LARP Youtube personality. Yes, I am a fan of Mo Mo O’ Brien and we are going to talk about this because this was a catastrophic move made by a specific LARP and players of said LARP that scared many women, myself included, from booking games that they had planned to book for several reasons. The first being what happened and the second being the way the LARP community reacted to what happened. At a LARP styled after the Witcher series, Mo Mo went to the LARP dressed in armor that had the color pink in it. She was reportedly bullied all weekend for the color and when she decided to talk about it on the internet, many people came out to bash her choice of wardrobe. First off, a natural color in nature should not be removing your immersion. Secondly, it did not escape my notice that this LARP is attended by mostly men and the intense backlash also came from mostly men. A ton of people from this LARP also came out and said that she had been acting like a diva all weekend in response to this and that the wardrobe rules were clear. When it was found that wearing the color pink was not specifically stated in the rules, the story changed to them saying that nobody had ever said anything about her wearing pink. This started a chain of discomfort when it came to all LARP. Mo Mo and other content creators like her became uncomfortable going to LARP which also meant that their followers, mostly women, stopped booking tickets or changed their minds about attending. If someone so well known in the community could get bullied at a campaign simply for being feminine at a LARP, then what would happen to all of the pink girlies who wanted to engage in something like this?
“LARP is mostly for men.”:
When I was a kid, my favorite television show was Power Rangers. I was the type of kid who loved a good action and adventure type show, but I also loved Power Rangers because there was a pink Power Ranger who was a girl. It was one of the only action shows for kids at the time that actually also had women in them in a prominent role. I know that people look at LARP games and think that it’s mostly hitting each other with foam which is a guy thing. Firstly, not all LARP is like that, in fact role-play LARP has shot up in popularity. Secondly, women like those things too! Feminine colors or characters are not the antithesis of action or fantasy games nor have they ever been. Some of the most fantasy right now is coming from women who are romantacy authors. And dis-including women from those spaces only make them worse. The two most popular LARP creators we’ve had are both women. It was them who introduced enough people to LARP that created the huge boom that we saw for a while there that now seems to have disappeared, partly because of this scenario. Even if the people defending the Witcher LARP were genuine about the behavior of Mo Mo and her friends, they still did not defend her or any of the other women who have been attacked for being “too feminine” in an environment that historically actually did have the color pink. And even if it didn’t, they didn’t defend a woman trying to be comfortably herself in a geeky space.
So what does this have to do with fantasy media?:
Femininity has always been looked down on in geek culture if it’s there for any other reason than to be sexualized. We all know how difficult it has been for women to enter geeky spaces before. It’s a creepy place out there where we’re treated with very little respect. Either your knowledge is questioned or you’re way too sexualized far too much of the time. This also shows up so much in fantasy media in the way that women are portrayed. And it also shows up in conversations about what kinds of fantasy media deserve praise or recognition. One of my favorite fantasy series of all time is ‘Once Upon a Broken Heart’ by Stephanie Garber which has a main character who’s very hyper feminine and has pink hair. Even for a fantasy series like that, you don’t see a lot of hyper-feminine presenting main characters. If romance and fantasy stories written by female authors are already put down by most geek and media communities and seen as less than or not real fantasy when they have main characters who don’t present hyper-feminine; where does that leave those of us who present hyper-feminine and want to continue to enjoy our geeky fandoms and our community in the way we want? All aspects of women deserve to be celebrated in all kinds of fandom spaces and things that are perceived to be feminine should be given the same respect as anything else.
Our communities are so much better with women and when you tell women that certain aspects they may have are not acceptable in your community, it no longer matters whether or not that is an aspect they personally identify with. If a geek community said that they had an issue with goth women in their community, I would also feel uncomfortable in that community. Not because I’m goth, but because I am uncomfortable supporting or participating in a community that tells women how it is or is not acceptable for them to be or dress or even act. We need to practice supporting women in geek communities more actively and that means every geek community. We also need to practice standing up for women presenting the way that they want to, because if it’s a no to one of us then all of us should be saying no in return.
See you across the pond!
Sincerely, Annie
Oreos & Peanut Butter 