Women's Prize for Fiction - new PINK logo, urgh!

[FluffyHamster]

Looked to see if there's already a thread for this, but couldn't see one?

Yesterday The Women's Prize for Fiction announced a new PINK logo for March and a tie-in with a sleepwear company (pink PJs...) with the following announcement:

Pink isn't just a colour, it's an attitude.
We are SO excited to unveil our brand-new, dazzlingly pink logo to celebrate Women's History Month and International Women's Day

Here at the Women’s Prize Trust, we've joined forces with female-founded British sleep and underwear brand, Stripe & Stare, to create a limited-edition pair of vibrant pink PJs and matching knicker set in their luxuriously soft signature fabric.

Understandably (and correctly IMHO) they are getting slated on Twitter for it: twitter.com/WomensPrize/status/1630855852780339202

Honestly, WHO thought this would be a good idea??

Yeah it's really pissed me off. I love books. And I happen to love the colour pink. But I found the whole email utterly patronising and demeaning.

Oh, fair enough.

(My hasty new year resolution of seeing things from other peoples point of view is hard going, can I stop now please?)

Ninety five fucking pounds?

You're kidding?!?! And I thought my cyberjammies were expensive!

Pity about the empathy and community cohesion, some of us are still hoping for a revolution.

Strip(e) & Stare seems to be hoping AGAINST a revolution.

(That said, the Women's Prize has been on the corporate "any-PR-is-good-PR" bandwagon for years.)

I buy my pyjamas from the men's section of Dunnes because they are cotton, roomy and usually some pleasing blue and white combo. Mind you, I don't think I've bought any since Covid so perhaps that's changed.

A man up for the women's fiction prize? And it's gone pink. And women are all into empathy and co-operation and all? Yuk. Men taking women's place again. Double yuk.

Detransition Baby was nominated in 2021, to be clear.

'Reese wanted to end their games, to get hit in a way that would affirm, once and for all, what she wanted to feel about her womanhood: her delicacy, her helplessness, her infuriating attractiveness. After all, Every woman adores a Fascist.'

£95 Fucking quid! And as you're there why not pay £50 for some hideous knickers to go with them.

Why would anyone pay that much for PJs and Knickers made of
Fabric: 95% TENCEL™ Modal, 5% Elastane.
Lace: 91% Nylon, 9% Elastane. B-Edit: 71% TENCEL™ Modal, 19% SeaCell™ and 10% Roica V550.
(As with all luxury fabrics, we recommend hand washing)

that have to be hand washed?

Go to Sainsbury's during the sale and buy a pair of 100% cotton PJs from the men's section, much comfier, better leg length, and pockets! for less than a tenner that you can just bung in the washing machine!

Ah, happy memories of school days...the huffing glue bit that is, (but nicked from the woodwork classroom store room!).

Your post was beautifully written by the way. Do you write Mills and Boon in your spare time?

Christ on a cracker.

A prize for women's literature and somehow they've managed to connect it to a) the colour pink, b) outdated gender stereotypes of women being kind, sociable and nice to other people and c) frilly knickers.

I can hear Virginia Woolf rotating slowly in her grave.

@Boiledbeetle You could spend that £95 and then dye them blue for £10? Oh wait, the different constituent materials might make them blotchy or stripey. Pink wasn't a consistent colour until the 19C since it was a subset of red so hard to fix - and worn mostly by men since red dyes are more hard to use than some blues. Blue was also the colour for women in certain countries because of the link to the BVM, though historically in all likelihood she wore various aspects of dun or striped white, black and brown.

I done them another poster

The cynical and bitter part of me is having a good laugh here. This is what you get from inclusiveness as a neoliberal value:

To be inclusive, the definition of 'woman' must be things men can be and things women can escape, in the gender-is-fee-fees-only world. And pink is one of those things! Easy to choose, easy to opt out, and can be turned into revenue streams.

Too bad that the erasure of women in literature prizes has nothing to do with any of this and everything to do with sex, sexism, misogyny, and the expectations that women be kind and serve as support humans for those who deserve support.

When we start to collect earnings statistics for nonbinary people we will find that those who are male earn more than those who are female, but if this averages out over the whole category, it will look as if there is no sex-based differences.

This is off the topic, but I was thinking of other prizes and grants which are now open for all womxen or for all who identify as non-men or for women and nonbinary people etc. When the world is sexist, attempts to correct for that can easily be captured by sexism, too.

We never read about mxn...

Remind me never to go for a job in marketing

Remember when Harriet Harman thought a pink bus would be a good idea?

💋

As with all luxury fabrics

To me, a luxury fabric is fine wool or silk, not artificial stretchy ones.

You're assuming that they're intended to be luxurious to women...

Given the profusion of nasty, scratchy, and hideously coloured underwear around Valentine's day, which is made of such an artificial fabric that it might as well be sold with a tube of Canesten, it's clear that what's luxury to women and what's luxury to men are veeeeery different things.

Why would I want knickers that match my pyjamas? And they look uncomfortable, too.

Because when you are having girly pillow fights with your girl chums on a grownup sleepover frilly knickers make it all so much more fun.

Tut tut, why are you fussing about your comfort when you should know you should dress purely for the male gaze, even when sleeping

This.

If "pink is an attitude" then it's an attitude safely confined to your choice of knickers and pyjamas.

As Germaine Greer once said about the "intelligence and resolution " safely confined to the eyes and face of a romantic novel's heroine. Some things don't change.

I think so: 'forest and thigh' is the giveaway - it's actually a whole lot of unpleasant images. Is this an example of Janelle's empathetic writing? It's pretty yucky.