pasterequity.blogg.se

• When did pink become symbol for female code#

“Why do all the girls get to buy pink stuff and boys get to buy different color stuff?” Why, indeed. However, most toys and books for boys are made from the different shades of blue and ‘?’ are related to robots, industry, science, dinosaurs, etc.” Fortunately we have little visionaries like the little girl Riley who vented her frustration with pink stuff for girls in an amazingly grown-up and succinct manner. Many toys and books for girls are pink, purple, or red, and are related to make up, dress up, cooking, and domestic affairs. As she says, “The differences between girls’ objects and boys’ objects are also divided and affect their thinking and behavioral patterns. Her photos are both cute and very unsettling. Korean artist JeongMee Yoon explored the extremities of gender color coding in her ongoing Pink & Blue Project. Pretty much everyone thought I was a girl.)Įven today, in an era that could be described as ‘everything goes’, and despite our awareness and resistance to assigning colors to the sexes, you still encounter the glaring pink-blue split in almost every kid’s store. (My dad’s idea of cool was to have a son with shoulder length hair up until the age of 7. But they flipped that in high school which contributed even more to my gender confusion.

When did pink become symbol for female code#

In my elementary school in the 80s the gym class dress code was red shorts for boys and blue shorts for girls. There’s a much quoted article in the US trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department from 1918 that said “pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” Such a practice was also common in Belgium in the 70s.

But which shade sits where? It depends on the era and the culture. Those are fairly unambiguous colors and they sit on the opposite sides of the strong-delicate spectrum. When those kids became parents in the 80s they longed for the pink/blue cuteness they were deprived of by their parents and the divide was back. As a reaction, parents of the rebellious 60s tried to break the pink/blue stereotypes with more ambiguous colors. Researchers generally agree that this is a 20th Century phenomenon that reached its peak after World War II due to the explosion of manufacturing and product choices. Before a little human is even born, and certainly before developing the ability to choose colors, it gets color coded. The baby doesn’t care about the color, but it will be raised to care a lot.Īpart from the obvious commercial drive to market baby products, gender color coding seems to reflect a conservative pink-blue worldview of clear and set-in-stone divides amongst the sexes. After some searching, I found a neutral solution in a nice green bodysuit.

Even if I personally don’t care that much about gender color conventions I found myself chained by the social proprieties. The most important thing in the world at that moment became, “pink or blue?’. My friend had told me over the phone, but I was embarrassed to call her and ask. In the middle of the store I suddenly stopped dead in my tracks when I realized that I couldn’t remember the sex of the newborn.

I found myself one day in a baby store looking for a gift after the sister of a friend had just become a mother.