Real mean may wear pink. But they sure don't like being surrounded by it.

Pink ties? Pink shirts? Sure. Wearing them shows that a guy is so confident in his masculinity that he can sport a "feminine" hue. But spending time in a pink room? That seems to make many men squirm.

The color gender gap came up this week in response to Pantone's "Color of the Year" for 2011: Honeysuckle, a vibrant hot pink with an orange undertone -- coral on steroids.

"It's a color with energy, at a time when we need it," said Leatrice Eiseman, director of the Pantone Color Institute (www.eisemancolorblog.com).

The female designers and color experts I interviewed all agreed that Honeysuckle is a great color.

"Did you talk to any guys?" my editor asked. Well, no. I hadn't. So I called Jim Noble (www.nobleinteriorsinc.com) of Minneapolis. He wears pink, he said, but he's not likely to give Honeysuckle a starring role in the color palettes he creates for clients. "I don't know many men who would warm up to that color."

Associated Press, Star Tribune

This surprised me a little. My husband has no aversion to pink, or so I thought. I've bought him lots of pink clothes, most recently a fuchsia linen shirt. It looks fabulous on him! (He's a winter, with darkest brown hair and hazel eyes.) He said he loved the shirt. But he hasn't worn it much, I had to admit.

"It wrinkles," he said, when I asked him. "It always needs to be ironed, and I never have time." Hmmm. He seems to find the time to iron his other shirts.

"What would you think if I painted a room hot pink?" I asked.

He shrugged. He's pretty indifferent to home decor. "How about our bedroom?" I persisted.

He grimaced. "Not the bedroom," he said.

I did a little online sleuthing about men and pink. I saw David Beckham rocking a pink scarf, Brad Pitt in a pink suit and Donald Trump in the pink ties he popularized on "The Apprentice." I read about men wearing pink to support breast cancer awareness, and even players on a Canadian hockey team getting their hair dyed hot pink to support the cause.

But while wearing pink can be a rakish style statement, decorating with pink appears to be an emasculating Design Don't, at least for men. One researcher determined that pink walls have a calming effect on violent prisoners, spurring a rash of jail cells painted "Drunk Tank Pink."

Some college football coaches have even had visitor locker rooms painted pink in the belief that the color made players passive.

It's just a color. But it still seems to carry a lot of emotional baggage.

Would you decorate a room with hot pink? How would your guy react? And if you're a guy, where do you stand on pink?