mriehle

Well, in our Stockton dojo I'm told that there used to be a pink belt. It got that way through the predictable white-belt-in-the-reds-washing incident. But the instructor at the time kept it around.

When teaching children, you get used to them "losing" their belt. They show up without it, but class must go on. A disproportionate number of times this happens with boys.

So, the aforementioned instructor would make them wear the pink belt, whatever their rank was. The boys would generally only lose their belts once or twice during this period.

But, alas, the pink belt era had to come to an end. It seems that a rash of girls losing their belts corresponded strongly with the general acceptance that if you showed up for class without your belt you wore the pink belt. It was eventually decided that this was not a coincidence.