Mom, is yellow a girl color?

While I was cooking in the kitchen, I heard my 4 year old ask me a question from the room inside. I wonder why kids do that, as if moms have some kind of extendable ears. Since I couldn’t hear him, he rolled in, half walking and running and well, half jumping, and repeated, “Mom, is yellow a girl color?”

I was surprised at the question. I tried to understand. “What do you mean by a girl color? All colors are for everyone.” My son, still half jumping, refusing to stay still, said “Don’t girls like pink and purple and boys like blue?” I pointed to my clothes, “I am wearing blue! and I am a girl. “Oh never mind,” said the little boy, and ran to play with his brother.

I stopped thinking about food. I wondered how I was going to address this issue. On the surface it didn’t seem like anything. It was a simple question by an innocent 4 year old. But in the larger context, it meant that even in the kid world, genders now had colors, and the constantly bombarding media and marketing had made a defining shift.

Every time I go to a clothing store, the color difference is striking and often in-your-face. The boys’ aisles are filled with blues, blacks and browns and I have struggled to find colorful clothes past the age of 2 or 3 years. They are often mundane, and establish the stereotypes further- boys like vehicles, rockets and dinosaurs. Girls’ clothing aisles have a completely different feel. They are usually brightly pink, and purple, often nauseatingly so. Some orange and rarely blue are a welcome relief. And they take stereotyping to another level- girls liked fairies, princesses and butterflies. This divide is made so stark, that you find it difficult to buy a fairy sporting bright pink sippy cup for your little boy, for what would people say.

Halloween doesn’t help the case much. Young boys and girls are dressed by the their parents, who usually chose an animal in the available ‘boy colors’ or butterflies or strawberries in ‘girl colors’. Older boys want to be super-heroes. Girls wants to be Elsa, Anna or another princess or fairy. Some try to break the mold, with occupational roles- firemen, doctor, policemen. But these are limited, and often limited by gender-specific options.

When I compare it with my childhood, I don’t remember being put in the ‘pink bracket’. My first water bottle was brown, with photos of international tennis stars in tiny circles. Any boy or girl could have owned it. Most of us grew up wearing all colors. Blue, interestingly was my favorite. I never thought of myself as a ‘pink person’. Occasionally yellow, orange and black. And sometimes red. But today, things are different. Marketing and the whole kids clothes and accessories Industry has made a big, damaging dent.

Commerce has divided the world into blue and pink. In some countries, you can find out the gender of your unborn child and shop everything according to that.Everything to do with kids- clothes, toys, accessories, shoes, blankets, sippers, bags, bed sheets, pencils and even erasers come in these two varieties. And these are very distinct, very deliberate.

The only color spared is yellow. And a tiny section for the newborns in usually every kids clothing store, is dedicated to this. When you don’t know or want to find out the gender of your unborn child, you buy yellow. And so yellow causes confusion, because yellow isn’t put in a bracket and sealed. And so maybe in a way, yellow unifies.

As we settled in after dinner, the kids were playing a whisper game.

My little boy tugged at his dad’s arm, “Whisper your favorite color in my ear, Daddy!”.

His Dad whispered inaudibly.

“Mommy, guess Daddy’s favorite color,” he insisted. I guessed wrong.

Then it was my turn to whisper my favorite color. He was quick to answer. “Pink! Mommy’s favorite is pink. Girls like pink!”.

I looked at him patiently and asked, “Have you seen me wearing much pink?”.

“No,” he answered thoughtfully. “You wear blue and green and yellow and black and red.”

This brought a smile to my face. “That’s right, and blue is my favorite color.” “And mine is Maroon”, Daddy added.

“Oh,” he smiled, and said, “Mine is orange!”, and went to fly pretend rockets.

I made a mental note. Buy different colors for the boys. Use all colors in the accessories. When it was time to have milk, I served it in a pink glass.

“No, I don’t like pink”, he insisted.

I hugged him and explained, “This has milk. It will not change if you use a blue or a green glass. These are all yours, and you need to use them.”

He looked at me, and something about his look made me feel that he understood, at least a little bit. It made him feel okay. He picked up the glass and drank the milk. I knew I had won this battle, and only a million remained.

Let’s make an effort, to break this ceiling. If any of you produce or make items that break these barriers, do mention your website in the comments. Let’s start a new trend. All colors are for everyone.

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