Men are hilarious

[ohstopitsteve]

It's fascinating.

I work in a company that designs products that mainly have a male customer base. A lot of these products come in different colour options, standard blue, red, green and also wait for it... PURPLE (dramatic dun dun dunnn sound).

The amount of fully grown adult men who cannot seem to handle seeing something purple that's marketed to men is astounding. Whenever a photo of a purple product is posted there are a lot of "gay", "for girls", "does it come with a handbag lmao" type comments. Some of them get REALLY angry about it too.

Ok ok I know not ALL men and a lot of men do buy them and feel secure enough in their masculinity to enjoy the colour purple, but it still astounds me every day the sensitivity of a lot of men. And women are often considered the weaker sex?! I don't think I've ever seen a woman crying on social media over something blue.

These comments whilst labelled no doubt as 'banter' are inappropriate. It sounds like they are in some regressive time travel setting. Idiots.

I loved it a few years ago when the Scotland football team’s change strip became pink. You see quite a lot of men wearing pink now, compared to a few years ago!

It starts really young though. Lots of things that were traditionally ‘for boys’ are now marketed as unisex but things that were traditionally ‘for girls’ are still marketed at girls (only pictures of girls on the advertising for example) and splashed with pink etc. sadly my little boy is becoming aware of things that are ‘for girls’. It’s horrible because there are some toys that I want him to have (dolls etc for imaginative play) that only seem to be in pink and - much worse- only have girls in the pictures. Also most baby dolls are clearly supposed to BE girls which is also a shame for him. There’s been a lot of work recently on making dolls with different skin tones and visible differences etc but somewhere it seems to have been missed that an obvious one is that there are very few male dolls despite the fact that half of all children are male.

I completely agree.

I find it completely fascinating though watching them all come out of the woodwork to have a full blown toddler tantrum over a colour in 2025.

Working in an environment where I deal with mainly male members of the public has been eye opening!

Yes, you are right of course that traditionally male colours are now seen more as unisex, although I do think there is still segregation on both sides when it comes to toys. It's always boys playing with monster trucks, hot wheels etc... and girls with dolls, barbies and so on.

I am trying to encourage more with my own son in terms of liking whatever he likes. He had a doll & pink Peppa pig pram when he was little, he's too old for it now but he still enjoys the occasional things that are more heavily marketed towards girls and we are of course happy to encourage whatever he likes! Stitch (Lilo and Stitch) for example I have noticed seems to be the new young girl craze at the moment, my son likes him though and has quite a few stitch things but it's quite hard to find anything with boys in the advertising as you say.

I still thought 45yo Dave from Surrey would be able to see something purple without having a wobble and beating his chest though 🤔I mean no one is FORCING you to buy it.

Purple was the colour worn by Roman Emperors… so no issues with masculinity then …
I ( 57 M ) have never thought of purple as “ gay “… how bizarre 🤔

As for wearing Pink … I have a couple of pink tops and am completely unphased wearing them …. Makes a change from endless variations of blue I usually go with