A little while back, at the suggestion of Dave, I discussed the color gray. In response the that posting, John asked a question about the colors pink and blue — specifically, why is pink identified with, or symbolic of girls and why is blue associated with boys? My extensive research on the subject didn’t surface a ‘black and white’ answer to the question.
I started thinking about ‘pink things’ and ‘blue things’ in hope of spotting a trend toward one gender, but the results were disappointing. I remember cotton candy being pink and bubble gum is pink, pink lemonade, and seems like I’ve heard of a pink lady cocktail and I believe Elvis had a pink Cadillac.
As for blue, the sky is blue, the ocean is sometimes blue, there are bluebirds, there’s blue suede shoes, blueberries and, of course, smurfs. Some people have blue eyes — some people also have pink eye, but that’s not a good thing. None of these things seemed to point me in the direction of a specific gender…
There’s a kids poem called Little Boy Blue and I’m familiar with a famous portrait called “Blue Boy,” but my extensive research uncovered the fact that Gainsborough painted a companion piece entitled, “Pink Boy.”
I just happen to have noticed that lately, marketers are pushing the color pink to make various products more appealing to women. The other morning, the Today Show was showing pink Legos to make them more appealing to girls. Personally I always considered Legos to be gender neutral….
But apparently the best idea these marketers could come up with to market to women was – let’s just make it pink! I’ve noticed that a lot of cell phones and laptops come in pink, but some things just look stupid. We got a catalog a few weeks ago that had pink tools — i”m not making this up. I don’t think even women would rush out to buy a pink hammer or screwdriver. The supermarket has beer with pink labels and the six-pack holder looks like a purse! Come on – do they think this is going to inspire women to drink beer?? A local department store has a pink George Foreman grill — now George Foreman is a pretty macho guy, and painting his grill pink is just wrong.
But getting back to the gender issue — there is some evidence that this pink and blue thing is fairly recent and, in fact, when it first started it was reversed — pink for boys, blue for girls.
Up until at least the 1800s, most infants were dressed in white, and gender differences weren’t highlighted until well after the kids were able to walk. Originally, pink was designated for boys, as it was thought to be the stronger color. In Christian tradition, red was associated as male, and its ‘little’ sibling pink was used for boys. Blue was associated with the Virgin Mary and therefore considered feminine. An article from the 1927 issue of Time Magazine seems to confirm this thinking: “In Belgium, Princess Astrid, consort of the Crown Prince, gave birth a fortnight ago to a 7-lb. daughter. The cradle…. had been optimistically outfitted in pink, the color for boys, that for a girl being blue.”
After WWI, blue was used extensively for men’s uniforms. So blue became associated as more of a masculine color. From around the 1940s onward, pink was pushed as a woman’s color. “Think Pink” was the marketing slogan to convince women to embrace their femininity.
So pink is for girls and blue is for boys — that’s just the way it is. If someone asks you why do we dress baby girls in pink and baby boys in blue, probably your best answer is — because they can’t dress themselves.
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