Yesterday, I mentioned to my daughter, mother of twin boys, that there was a Doper thread to the effect that back in the turn of the 20th century, the colors in the headline were accepted as natural - pink for boys, blue for girls.
Not surprisingly, she found this interesting and I promised to send her a link to the thread, and also the Wiki article on it.
But my searches are to no avail. Can you help, please?
If you want to include a short Search Tutorial, that would be nice, too.
And if you want to vent on my stupidity, feel free.
I, too, remember such a thread, and I, too, cannot find it (purged, maybe?). Anyway, here what Google Answers has to say.
This point sticks out for me because it once left me totally flummoxed when I was reading a Rex Stout story from about 1912. A key point was supposed to be derived from the colour of the baby clothes a character was knitting, but it was the opposite of the blue for boys, pink for girls that I had grown up with and been told was universal.
Nah, that ain’t it. GilaB even says, “There was an old thread that went through the pink/blue thing, but apparently it didn’t survive the purge of old stuff”.
The original thread ain’t there any more.
Googling “pink blue boys girls” turns up, besides the Google Answers…
Wiki articles on “Baby blue” and “Pink” have statements that gender specific “pink/blue” colors began in the 1920s to 1940s, but IMO their footnoted cites are not good enough to pass muster on the SDMB. But then, I’m picky, and your friend’s MMV.
Here’s a previous thread(from 2004). I posted to it–BUT, there WAS one previous to that, in which I also posted. That very, very old one has been purged.
The bottom line is that the convention has flipped back and forth over time.
You might also try Blue: The History of a Color by Michel Pastoureau, which spends some time on the blue = feminine, pink = masculine convention and briefly mentions the 20th-century switchover.
