Fashion

Dear Ralph Lauren, where's my royalty check?

When did my color become everyone's color?

Suddenly, I see it everywhere. It's throughout the stores, all over the streets, on half the women I see, even the men. It seems everybody is thinking pink these days.

I love it. I love the color, love seeing it everywhere, love everything about it and every shade - yes, even that awful bubble gum pink.

I don't remember when I didn't heart pink. I was a girly girl - still am. I played with Barbies, and my favorite dress was, of course, a fuchsia strapless ball gown.

But middle school came, and I felt the need to be rebellious. Pink was for little girls. I was all grown up now. So I chose a new favorite color: big, bad, menacing ... mint.

That just tells you how rebellious I was.

Mint stayed my "favorite" through most of high school. I wanted a mint Mazda Miata for the longest time. Pink was always there underneath the surface, sure, but I wasn't going to admit my favorite color was some girly shade of red that belonged probably only in a baby girl's room.

Back then, it was easy for me to deny my true color. Pink wasn't everywhere like it is now. It wasn't constantly in my face reminding me that I was a traitor to all pink lovers.

Even when I had to choose a dress for my junior prom, pink wasn't a color that was widely available. But I was still in denial anyway, so instead I chose a satin periwinkle gown that crisscrossed down my back.

Senior prom was when my true feelings came rushing back in. But, no, I did not wear pink. I had bought a dress back in the winter during a sale, and though I adored it, it hit me hard how much I missed pink when the actual prom dresses came out in the spring and the color was all over the racks.

It became an obsession after that. My college roommate happened to love pink, too, and we turned our room into a shrine to the color. One finals week, amid the drunkenness and lack of studying, we wasted - oops, devoted - a night to stringing up pink Christmas lights all over our room. The sense of accomplishment was like none other. Forget that we each had a final the next morning - we had pink mood lighting in our room!

I haven't let up since.

Now it overpowers my closet - even the hamper is pink. Any time I purchase anything, whether it's clothes, accessories or even appliances, if it's available in pink, that's what I get. I try to diversify, but the pink thing is always what grabs my attention.

My love for pink is about so much more than the color, though. It represents me, my life, my heart, which I wear on my sleeve. I am a total princess, and pink is my domain. It makes me happy, proud and ready to take over the world in 4-inch heels. It's true that the world looks better through rose-colored lenses - I know because I actually own them.

And, the truth is, I look good in pink. Not everyone can pull off the color, but I can. And when a boy can do it, too, yum ... as one of these pink wearers I know would say, "That's hot with two T's."

So this isn't a phase. It's me, my personality. It will always be me. And I love it.

The other day, I mentioned that I was having a slight identity crisis, to which my friend replied:

"Oh, no! Are you going to change colors?"

- Yvonne Ngai is a copy editor/designer at the St. Petersburg Times. Her e-mail is yngai@tampabay.com