Boys in Pinks
How did pink become a feminist color?
When I was around 12, we went to buy a bicycle. I wasn’t allured by any specific color and chose the only purple one standing in solitude in the entire section. In the upcoming days, several girls with the same model of the bicycle as mine caught my eyes, to my surprise none were in purple but in monotonous pink. By then, I wasn’t enthusiastic enough to question WHY? Revisiting this incident now, makes me wonder about the backstory of the prevalence of pink among girls.
I was super stunned to realize this wasn’t an age-old phenomenon and things were topsy turvy once.
Initially, babies were dressed in plain white clothes, as they were practical and convenient then, says the author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America, Jo B. Paoletti. When pastel colors were introduced in the mid-19th century, blue and pink walked in as gender-neutral colors.
The storm of sex-categorization of colors surged in the early 20th century. In 1918, the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department reported that “generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that 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.”
Few claimed that blue blends with blue eyes and blond hair and pink with brown eyes and brown hair.
This wasn’t a unanimous theory. In 1927, a TIME issue published a chart on the recommendation of gender-specific products by famous stores and it was quite scattered with some recommending pink for boys and others standing on the opposite pole.
So why did this change?
The obsession with pink among girls kicked off in the 1940s when pink was regarded as a color of emotion and romance and was associated with girls. This was spurred on by the capitalistic society. With mass production becoming rampant, industries started limiting products for girls to pink and that for boys to blue to please the consumers.
In 1953, the wife of President Dwight Eisenhower, Mamie Eisenhower showed up for the inauguration ball in a pretty pink robe. The shade was popularised as ‘First Lady Pink’. She was so obsessed that she decorated the entire White House in a pink theme. This fandom spread across the women in the country.
But there was a turn in the 1960s and 70s when the wave of liberation flooded. Women felt capsuling their daughters in a pink box would blind them from freedom and individuality.
By the 1980s this stereotypical fashion returned back and one of the prime drives was the rise of prenatal testing. Parents were thrilled to stuff their carts with pink/blue products beforehand and plan a gender-based makeover for the gender reveal party.
By the way, is the liking for pink among girls nature or nurture?
Few researchers say it developed from the ancient women's ability to pick red fruits as they were usually the food gatherers. But it was later proved women are no better sensitive to red color.
It is widely agreed to be caused by nurture. In a study by the American psychologists Vanessa LoBue and Judy DeLoache, a pair of toys, one pink and the other of any random color were shown to children of different ages. Children up to the age of two didn’t show any color preference. But above two years, an increasing trend of girls opting for pink toys and boys rejecting them was observed.
As the children grow up, the exposure to gender-based advertisements and the society that surrounds them turns out to be a stimulant to inculcate an idea of associating a color to sex.
Well, so what? It is no harm for a girl to like pink and a boy to prefer blue.
It is a matter of free will. In cases, boys are forced to dump pink, which evolves slowly and persuades them to be strong, powerful, not to cry. In parallel, pushing girls to like pink cast a shadow of weakness and vulnerability on them.
In one of my favorite Netflix series, Lucifer, Adam (the actual Adam from the Adam and Eve story) says, “When God first made me, my role was clear….. be strong, show no weakness and problem-solve through violence. But everything has changed ….. Dudes can be vulnerable.”
Although Adam agrees reluctantly, this is the truth. Humans can be strong, weak, vulnerable, crybabies, stone-hearted, caring irrespective of sex. That’s not to say women should shed their feminine attitude. It implies women and men can choose their attitudes and so their favorite colors, out of their will.
I wish boys and girls choose a bicycle not because it is feminine or masculine but because it is their favorite.
