Real Men Don't Do Pastels

My mum was staying with us over the holiday season and, always wanting to be helpful and contribute to the normal household duties, started doing some laundry. She, innocently enough, asked me if I had any "pastels" that needed to be washed. What?!? What the f**k is a pastel?!?

Here, I think, is a rather basic difference between men and women - color perception and vocabulary. Women make distinctions between and use precise labels for a dress colored burgundy, cardinal, carmine, cherry, coral, crimson (some men know this one, but only if they're college football fans), currant, dive (really? dive?), flame, garnet (see note for crimson), maroon, raspberry, rose, ruby, salmon (surely orange, no?), strawberry, tomato, vermillion, and wine.

Men see red - just red. We're willing to separate "lights" from "darks", just don't push it.