Pink Eye

Okay, so the University of Iowa recently remodeled its football stadium. Big deal, I know, but it's news here.

Not only is it news here, but now it's controversy here. Why? Because the university decided to keep alive a tradition of former Iowa coach Hayden Fry and remodel the visitor's locker room completely in the color pink. (The old locker room was painted pink under Fry’s leadership, but the new locker room goes much further with custom pink urinals and sinks, etc. Think Barbie barfing up wintergreen lozenges and you'll get the picture.)

Anyway, the pink paint, which I’ve known about for years, had always been explained to me this way: Fry, a former psychology major, chose pink after reading studies that showed looking at the color makes one lethargic. Okay, whatever. It always seemed rather stupid to me, but I didn't really care, and most certainly I understand that an element of psychology plays into college football in many ways.

So, the pink locker room is living on. Not being a Hawkeye fan or a person who spends any time in the Kinnick Stadium locker rooms, I hadn’t really thought too much more about it. And I certainly have never read Hayden Fry's autobiography, A High Porch Picnic. (Actually, I think I'd rather stick barbecue skewers in my eye while listening to Rush Limbaugh than read A High Porch Picnic). However, if I had read the jerk’s book, I would probably have been more disturbed. According to the blog BuzWords, penned by adjunct U of I law professor Erin Buzuvius, Hayden Fry uses his book to explain the pink locker room in this way: "Pink is often found in girl's (sic) bedrooms, and because of that some consider it a sissy color."

A sissy color. Ahem.

I guess deep down I probably always realized that the whole thing was rooted in homophobia but never really took time to think about it. Buzuvius obviously did -- but now, of course, she’s getting blasted for having an opinion. Do I think this is a really big deal? No. But if I were a supporter of the U of I might damned well. It’s awfully embarrassing in the year 2005 for a supposedly forward-thinking university to perpetuate a “tradition” that essentially implies that femininity is tantamount to weakness. I mean, would the coach of a woman’s sport ever paint her opponents’ locker room pink to make them calm? I don’t think so. It’s never been about color psychology.

The irony, of course, is that after appearing on a local television station’s report about the locker room and then posting her opinions on BuzWords, Buzuvius has had about 150 posters on her blog, and plenty of others in additional forums, I’m sure, telling her that she should get over it and find more important things to worry about. (This from people who spend large parts of their day discussing Hawkeye athletics in great detail online, of course.) Other arguments against have largely included sentiments along the lines of “men wear pink now, so how is it sexist?”

The way I see it (and I think the way Buzuvius sees it, too), the actual issue here is not whether painting something pink is in and of itself insulting to any group of people. The “men reclaiming pink” arguments are entirely missing the point. The issue is that the University of Iowa is choosing to celebrate a tradition that is rooted in Hayden’s old-fashioned, good-old-boy sexism.

I mean, if it isn’t a big deal, why was it done?

I think it's a fair question to ask.