Over the years, I and other women riders who've written for RideApart have covered both other bikes made by the Russian firearms maker Kalashnikov, as well as the inexplicable urge some brands have to pink all the things when you want to sell to women. As a woman who rides, myself, I have a complicated love/hate relationship with that color, as I suspect many women also do.
On the one hand, it's a color some people (and not only women) adore. And as someone who also loves bright colors and wants to see more of them in the world, who am I to yuck anyone else's yum, I ask myself? There's enough beige in the world, I say. Bring on allllllll the colors.
But on the other, it's often used as a sort of annoyingly dismissive, diminishing form of shorthand. It's pink, so that means it's For The Ladies™, you know? Sometimes a color is just a color, but sometimes it's meant to instantly convey that this thing isn't meant to be taken seriously, that it's not at full power, that it's lesser than the one meant for the big boys. Slower, maybe, or equipped only with an automatic transmission because us ladies can't possibly wrap our heads around the complexities of operating a clutch.
