A while ago, Shiny Big Cheese, Katie, sent me this link to an article in Radar Magazine about classic books getting "chick lit makeovers" (the illustration, left, comes from the article). Basically, Alice Munro's The View From Castle Rock has been reissued with some pink on the cover. The horror!
The reason it's taken me so long to write about this is that, following Katie's email I got a few more emails from friends alerting me to the sudden pink backlash all over the interweb. So many links to so many demented, irrational arguments that I just couldn't even begin to write about it without punching the screen.
Apparently pink "damages girls' brains" and "not only does a disservice to literature, but to women". But I just don't see it.
Am I missing something? For a start, there are nowhere near as many chick lit books in pink covers as is claimed. ("Where are all the books, pyjamas or sports kit in other colours?" asked Katy Guest in The Independent. Um. In the shops?) But even if every single book aimed at women (which is pretty much every single book published since, as we know, men don't do much reading), how exactly would that damage our brains?
I get that pink might put some people off reading the book, but if you're put off a book solely by the colour of the cover, then perhaps your brain has already been damaged...
Incidentally, the Katy Guest article also included the following: "Last week, the best-selling novel was This Charming Man by Marian Keyes. It is aimed at women, so obviously its cover is pink."
Ah, now I see why Guest only sees "books, pyjamas [and] sports kit" in pink. She's colour blind. I did try to leave a comment to the effect that the cover of the book is purple - PURPLE! - but I couldn't make it sound like I'm not a nutter so I had to give up.
So what do you think? Are you overwhelmed by pink? Horrified by pink? Or do you think it's, you know, pretty?
