Unpretty in pink

Though fashion and music trends would have it otherwise, I’m not going back to the ’80s.

by Charyn Pfeuffer

Did you ever notice that nobody ever really looked pretty in pink? If you think about it, pink is for people who find red too threatening. It’s an awkward, almost naive color, neither as bold as magenta nor as elegant as mauve. Pink was the color of my 1980s teenage years in the suburbs of Philadelphia, when anything could happen but didn’t. It was the pre-cable twilight world, where glossed lips promised, “It’s wild! It’s hot! It’s video rock!” to the Bow Wow Wow beats of “I Want Candy.” It was Cyndi Lauper hiccupping “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” the suburban new-wave banner of Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America,” or the Go-Go’s in the “Our Lips Are Sealed” video, which featured them driving around the water fountain in a convertible with mesh scarves flapping in the wind and geometric earrings dangling. Molly Ringwald, the heroine of nerdgirls everywhere, wore pink in her best films — you know, the ones where she bites her lip and wears a bowler hat and pouts for 78 minutes, and in the 79th minute, the cüte/fucked-up/flaky boy comes through and gives her back her panties on her forgotten 16th birthday, passionately embraces her at the prom, or silently holds her in some public place where someone or something is as at risk. Pink was a bill of goods that nerdgirls like me bought into because it implied that you’d be rewarded for being your different, freaky, geeky, awkward self.

When I went off to what we’ll call Phil Collins High School in the late ’80s, the world went pastel, Guess, and LA Gear, and I was suddenly too embarrassed to be me. I was either ashamed to be smart or didn’t think I was smart enough. For the first time, I worried about what people thought of me, probably because guys (and a fair number of girls) would blatantly whisper their disapproval of the non-in crowd from backs of classrooms, hallways, and cars.

In my bedroom, down came the posters: the cover of Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) with Annie Lennox in an orange shaved head and a tie, Prince’s Purple Rain, and the scene from Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” video where he steps down onto the sidewalk and makes it glow. Only the Police remained. I hid the Cyndi Lauper album and didn’t play it again until last year. I have no idea where my Kim Wilde single is — the first record I ever bought with babysitting money. Shortly thereafter, pop-metal bands like Poison, Mötley Crüe, and Bon Jovi started to happen, and Debbie Gibson and Tiffany sang so-called teenage thoughts.

I used to study my face in the mirror for hours and figure out the right expression to hide my braces. Or I’d suck in my cheeks and wonder why I didn’t have defined cheekbones like everyone else. I even contemplated plastic surgery. That was the year I learned I was ugly — or at least not pretty by traditional standards. I recently found a picture of me from that era and the images are absurd. I’m sitting on my bed with pouffy, butterfly-clipped-back hair and a wanna-be-sultry pout. I’m wearing a pink sweatshirt with embroidered kelly-green turtles on it that my mother bought for me.

I wasn’t alone. At the time, everyone’s hair defied gravity, and makeup was completely incongruous. I went preppy and classic rock because my friends didn’t inspire much else and neither did I. But pink had one more shot, at my senior prom. My friend Stephanie came over and made my permed hair pouffy and made up my face with the precision of a paint-by-numbers kit. It was a lot like Halloween and my boyfriend, Marc, played along. His pink cummerbund and frilly tuxedo shirt were the same ugly shade of pink as my dress. I thought that I looked like a parody of a female, but guys thought I looked great and asked me why I didn’t dress that way more often. That is why I left suburban Philadelphia without looking back.

I recently turned 28 and I just figured it all out. I’d give anything to be clueless and fearless and 13, the age at which I was first allowed to wear makeup. I don’t wear much now, for the same reason I piled it on back then: to express who I am. I’d rather spend the extra 15 minutes drinking coffee, surfing E! online, writing, or staring into space.

Back then, I wanted to stand out because I lived in a monotonous, monogrammed-cardigan, country-club-member world. I didn’t have a clue what punk was. I wore 47 colors of Revlon eye shadow all at once. On me, the effect was kind of like Molly Ringwald–meets–Dawn Wiener. There were also neckties involved, and hats, rubbery bracelets, obnoxious paisley prints, and fake pearls. But looking back at it all makes me feel the way the Psychedelic Furs’ “Pretty in Pink” used to make me feel: like there was a magic potion that could make your freakiness disappear or turn golden.

Charyn Pfeuffer sheepishly admits having worn sweater dresses and stirrup pants, but remains proud of her vinyl Duran Duran collection.