US women at the Vancouver Olympics: Pink, white, and blue?

US ladies at the Vancouver Olympics: Why pink, white, and blue?

If you haven’t noticed, practically half the US women competing at the Olympics have pink hair. Or pink something. Or at least a very feminine touch.

Maybe it’s some sort of women’s lib movement with an athletic twist – witness snowboarders such as Hannah Teter having her own lingerie line.

As in, yes we can be buff – and girly, too.

US bobsledders Erin Pac and Elana Meyers, who will get the bronze medals they earned last night in a ceremony tonight, definitely fit that description.

Meyers can squat 160 kilos (352 pounds), but her pink fingernails and glittery pink eyelids give that brawn a dainty touch.

“Every brakeman that’s slid with Pac has had to wear pink,” says Meyers.

That was fine with her. In fact, she was used to it.

“When I was growing up, my mom assigned us colors so she could remember us,” Meyers said, according to the Feb. 16 daily wrap-up produced by the US Olympic Committee. “I was pink, my younger sister was purple and my older sister was blue. It just kind of stuck.”

Cross-country skier Kikkan Randall, who has long dyed her hair bright colors, experimented with magenta this time around.

Shannon Bahrke also has pink hair – her fiancé’s suggestion – as does skeleton racer and mom Noelle Pikus-Pace.

But Pac and Meyers probably take the cake.

Pac’s sled is nicknamed Pinky, but you wouldn’t know now since they had to take the pink flames off it for the Olympics.

“It wasn’t very patriotic,” says Meyers, who reserved her thumbnail and pinky nails for the American flag and sports red, white, and blue on her toenails as well.

Still, she and Pac kept the pink theme, even inventing a slogan for their first Olympics: “Go Pac! Go pink!”