When a friend asked me why,

why do I like blue?

I said because it's a cool color

and not hot like pink.

But that's not the real reason.

I used to like pink,

so imposed on me from a young age,

never once doubting that was my favorite color.

A pink shirt, a pink pencil case, pink sneakers,

a pink hairpin, a pink dress, I wanted everything pink.

But at some point in my life,

I couldn't stand pink anymore.

It was a "hot" color, warm, and about heat.

I hated the hot weather,

couldn't stand it.

So I "liked" blue.

I came to like it perhaps.

No one imposed it on me.

But the real reason,

why I like blue?

Probably because pink was imposed on me,

because I'm a girl.

In whatever we owned,

whatever we wore,

girls were pink (or red), boys were blue.

I probably felt liberated, free,

to say I liked blue.

Blue was freedom from stereotypes.

Blue was freedom from being a "girl".

And, stores sold blue skirts,

so why not?

"Rebellious",

that's the word.

I wanted to be outside of the box,

unconsciously rejecting stereotypes

without consciously knowing what they were.

But stereotypes come back to me today,

older, wiser (or so I claim),

because I have too many blue shirts and,

my mom says,

I look good in pink.

Light pink, I'm willing, to introduce in my life again.