So I got myself a pink 360 controller. It’s a nice shade of pink. It’s not quite as nice a pink as DS pink, but certainly a lot more appealing than the Pepto Bismol pink of the PSP. What? What’s wrong with that? Ok, ok I admit I was slightly embarrassed in the indie games shop buying the imported peripheral, but still I wanted it enough to brave my own humiliation to get it. I was also quite taken with the blue one which, up close, is quite a warm shade of blue. It’s a sort of baby blue. Not in a pastel way, but somehow not very manly. Of course while looking at them and discussing the whole issue of colour with the staff in the shop it seemed quite preposterous to be trying to identify what sort of blue constitutes ‘manly’ but I can assure you I am in fact backed up by science.

I know this is more Sarin’s field but having done a little research it seems that a study published in August shows evidence that there is a genetic preference in females for pink and in males for blue. The study used the colour blue as the standard, as both sexes are known to have a colour preference for blue. Within that frame though, the females chose redder shades of blue while males veered towards the blue/green shades. The same difference in preference cropped up across people of different cultural backgrounds.

What I’m saying is I like pink and I’m comfortable with that. Whether playing with a pink controller will affect my mad skillz is another scientific study altogether.