PINKY, THE FLUFFY PINK RABBIT

Pinky, the fluffy pink rabbit was not a happy bunny. Because she was a girl rabbit, the only clothes that she could get were all only available in lots of shades of what could only really be referred to as ‘pink’.

All of her friends wore pink.

All of her friends’ mums wore pink.

Shocking, vulgar, gender-defining hideous pink.

Pinky did not like this. In her mind she wanted to wear the whole rainbow of hues from aquamarine through to scarlet and beyond, but mostly, deep down, she really wanted a floor-length coat of the deepest darkest black and some chunky combat boots.

This was not the kind of thing that could be bought down at the Warren shopping centre. Especially not in the girls’ clothing departments. Oh, how she’d looked longingly at the spectrum of clothing options that her brother Peter and his rough-and-tumble mates could pick and choose from. The blues, the reds, the yellows, the greens, the purples, the browns, the greys, and, of course, the blacks. Peter could even get camouflaged jackets if he wanted them, but those were never, ever available wherever Pinky and her mum bought their clothes from.

Pinky spoke to her mother about this, but her mother did not like what she had to say.

Her mother wanted her to look like ‘a girl’, whatever that meant. After all, she already was a girl, wasn’t she? It didn’t matter what she wore, nothing was going to change that.

“Besides,” her mother said, “Don’t you want to fit in?” This caused Pinky to frown. Surely her personality should have more bearing on something like that? If other rabbits only wanted to know her because of the clothes she was wearing, she wasn’t really sure that they would be quite the sort of rabbits that she’d want to be hanging around with anyway.

“And you do look so lovely in pink… So do all the other girl rabbits. Do you want them laughing and pointing at you?”

Pinky told her that, if they were that shallow, she didn’t give a rotten lettuce leaf what the other girl-bunnies thought, quite frankly, and that if her mother loved her she should be encouraging her to be an individual and not some kind of clone of everyone else.

“Anyway,” her mother carried on, having now completely lost her patience at the ingratitude that she felt was being shown her by Pinky, “The bunnymarket doesn’t stock any girl-rabbit clothes that aren’t pink. Do you really want to be seen out and about wearing boy-rabbit’s clothes?”

“Fine by me!” replied Pinky, “If it gets me out of these hideous rags…”

Pinky then went on to question the whole notion of gender constructs that was being used to define her and, in many ways control her far more effectively than any out-of-date notions of sexism might have done.

“Don’t you get it, mum? That’s precisely the sort of gender stereotyping that keeps us oppressed and in our little pigeonholes. Besides which, those ideas of gender roles are only things that society has ascribed to us as females. We can and should truly be what we want to be, and do what we want to do, and that should include what colours we choose to clothe ourselves with.”

Deep down, of course, Pinky’s mother really wanted Pinky to dress more like her, or rather, in her heart-of-hearts, Pinky’s mother actually wanted to dress more like Pinky and pretend that she wasn’t actually a grown-up and that life was not slipping away from her and onto a new generation. She dreamed of the day when a complete stranger might ask whether they were sisters and not think that they were mother and daughter at all, so she could convince herself that she was still young enough and beautiful enough to be noticed by all those young bucks that she saw hanging around at the Warren.

“I wish she wouldn’t keep trying to be my friend,” thought Pinky, “What I want her to be is my mum!”

“But,” said Pinky’s mum, in one last desperate plea to keep her onside, “You’re the centre of my world. When people see you, it reflects on me and tells me what they think of me…”

“But I’m not a designer accessory!” bellowed Pinky, “I’m your daughter!”

Her mother flashed her a dark look, thinking that this would be the perfect moment to disown the ungrateful doe and throw her out of the hole and see how she coped then. Instead she tried another tack. “You’re the most important thing in the world, you know…” she began…

Pinky interrupted her sharply. She wasn’t having any of that nonsense. “...and so are all the other little Princes and Princesses as far as their mothers are concerned, and it’s all just rubbish! We’re all just insignificant nobodies in the great scheme of things... Even you!”

“But I love you, Pinky,” said her mother, starting to cry, “You keep me young…”

“Yuk!” snorted Pinky, “You really are just a bit pathetic if you really only want to re-live your youth through me…” and with that she left her mother alone in the kitchen, sobbing to herself.

Later on that day, Pinky stole some of her mum’s housekeeping and went out and bought herself some brand new combat boots and then went to play on the motorway.