Carnivorous Cow

The Cow was intrigued to read that girls prefer pink, after all. Given the metrosexual flurry of pink shirts, she'd always thought it was girly men rather than real girls who liked pink. But the findings of the study did not really make sense to her.

"Isn't it assumed," she asked Gramsci, "that a preference for pink, by girls, must be counterposed by a preference for blue, by boys?"

Gramsci nodded. "I'd have thought," he agreed, "that 'girls prefer pink' meant, 'to blue'. But that doesn't seem to be what the study found, at all. It seems that girls prefer red to green. And that everyone prefers blue to yellow. That doesn't justify forcing girls to wear pink rather than blue!"

"No," the Cow concurred. "If everyone prefers blue, everyone should wear blue. And no one should be forced into yellow, and girls should not be forced into green. And should be given red, rather than wussy pink, honestly!"

Gramsci chuckled. The image of little baby girls in flaming scarlet appealed, somehow.

The Cow was looking perplexed, though. "But what do you think it means," she asked, "that the Financial Times prints on pink paper? Do you think it's appealing to a girly readership, or a girly men readership?"After all, she'd spotted Mr Timberland reading it on more than one occasion.

"Perhaps it's ideological," Gramsci suggested. "Like the ruling party, they're trying to disguise their right-wing fast capitalist neoliberal orientation by a thin verneer of left-looking smoke and mirrors?"

The Cow blanched. The ANC had had significant success with that deception, and she worried about how easy it seemed. Critical, or even close, reading seemed a thing of the past.

"Mind you," she muttered, "things are clearly not what they seem. Even Terry Eagleton reads the Torygraph, after all..."