I was in the toy store the other day. As I walked down the aisle aimed at girls I was assaulted with a barage of pink toys and boxes. It seems you can’t sell something to girls unless it’s bright pink.
How did pink become a girl’s color? Are there cultures outside of the US that have this same association?
I can answer part of your question by repeating what I had said in a previous thread, “pink is out”.
Here’s what this article (from a site on gay rights) has to say (paraphrasing.)
A certain Leslie Feinberg, in several books (including one entitled Beyond Pink and Blue) has claimed that around the year 1900 the customary color for boys was pink and for girls was blue, pink being too “hot” a colour for girls and blue too “soothing” a colour for boys.
This was changed by the popularity of two paintings, The Blue Boy by Gainsborough and Pinkie by Lawrence. The site claims that the exhibit originally caused much uproar due to the “inappropriate” colours chosen for the boy and girl, but their enduring popularity changed children’s fashions.
Thanks.
Interesting, I’d seen the painting “The Blue boy” before, but no connection to sexual signifigance was made.
I’d check up on that link to the article though. I couldn’t find it there.
Was this an international sort of thing? Did folks in Europe make the same color connections?
I think its odd that we distinguish pink to begin with. It’s just red with a little bit of white in it. If you add white to green or blue we still call call it green or blue even though we might qualifiers like “baby blue” or “mint green.”
m3, the article is there. The page is very long so it might be hard to find. Search for the word “pink” for example and you should find it.
Yes, several European countries have the tradition of pink for girls and blue for boys. I think it’s because of the influence of american culture, but I can’t say for sure.
Hold on a second.
IIRC, during the women’s rights movement it was touted that “pink = girly” was just nothing more than an artificial societal brainwashing tactic used to yoke women at infancy into subserviant roles by evil male-dominated capitalist oppressors.
Then scientists did some objective studies and discovered that even without the evil male-dominated capitalist oppressors… girls like pink best.
If you are going to attribute the color assignments to eventual acceptance of startling color choices in paintings by Gainsborough and Lawrence, as per your previous article, Gainsborough is European (well, English, anyway …), and I’m assuming Lawrence is too.
Two babies are in a crib, a baby boy and a baby girl.
The baby boy says to the baby girl, “I am a boy and I have something that you don’t!”
The baby girl shouts back “You do not!”
The baby boy lifts up his baby outfit and points down and says: “See! Blue Booties!”
Ok, it made me laugh. Not really adding anything to the discussion… shrug sue me 
CandyMan
Arnold: “The Blue Boy” was painted circa 1770. It took it over 130 years to become popular?
I’m curious how they made “objective studies” on these girls. It seems like they’d have to raise them in a basement to avoid the contamination of commercial culture (not to mention the fact that they might have been dressed in pink as soon as they left the hospital).
For those of you who are addressing Arnold, I found the article in the link he gave. It answers your questions.
Here is a large portion of it.
At the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, pink was the color for boys,
blue for girls. Pink was considered too “hot” of a color for little girls
to handle, blue was too soothing and calming to use on “strapping” boys.
Young boys wore pink, girls blue. At that time, remember no tv, movies,
radios, stereos. Outside of major cities, much of the entertainment outside
of the home was attending travelling lectures and exhibitions. Two
paintings began touring the U.S., “Blue Boy” by Gainsborough and “Pinkie” by
Lawrence.
When they first toured, they caused quite an uproar!! “Trying to make girls
of our little boys!” “Endangering the sweet nature of our girls!!” &
“Unnatural, dangerous, radicalism gone too far.” Remember, at that point
some women were trying hard to get the vote here too…
The exhibit received lots and lots of newspaper attention, and as it
moved from city to city (& town to town), people flocked in droves to see
these two paintings that BY THE COLOR OF THE CLOTHING totally turned the
“proper” world of the color of (privileged) children’s clothing upside down!
Many people were furious, preachers ranted from the pulpit, newspaper
editorials went on the offensive, and of course more and more people turned
out to see such an odd and disturbing sight.
Some of us may be quite familiar with them, my 40s-50s-era mother loved them
and had poster-sized prints of them hanging in the hallway of our home!! And
that’s what changed the pink=boy, blue=girl to the opposite stereotypes we
have today… Those two white, red-cheeked, wealthily-dressed children were
soooooo appeallingly painted, when they became available people wanted
prints of them to have in their own homes.
Ukulele Ike: The article asserts that the painting became widely known in the USA after it “toured” the country in a travelling exhibition.
yabob: The article I reference states that those paintings caused a large controversy in the USA, and says nothing about their effect in Europe.
I do not vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in the article I mentioned.
m3 wrote:
“I’m curious how they made “objective studies” on these girls. It seems like they’d have to raise them in a basement to avoid the contamination of commercial culture (not to mention the fact that they might have been dressed in pink as soon as they left the hospital).”
I don’t know for sure, m3, but perhaps other dopers can add their insights.
I do have a few ideas, however:
First of all, it doesn’t matter what color the kids were wearing at the hospital, because IIRC infants are colorblind.
Second, it would not take draconian measures like raising a kid in a basement to keep a toddler free of “gender-biased” influences, at least for a few years. After all, until the kid is, what, three years old or so he/she is virtually ENTIRELY at the mercy of a parent’s whim. I’m sure that there are/were plenty of free-thinking or conspiracy-minded parents (especially in the '60s thru '80s) who would have LOVED the idea of debunking the “boy = blue, girl = pink” rule. After all, we’re not talking about sleep deprivation studies here… just pink wallpaper vs. blue.
Thirdly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the scientists did a worldwide study – going to places where the “commercial culture” was not as intrusive as here in the US – before they reached their conclusions.
The color name pink comes from a flower of that name, which, no surprise, happens to be that color.
The flower is called “pink” because it’s very small and pinck means ‘small’ in Dutch.
The inflammatory eye disease “pinkeye” was given that name by the Dutch, not because the eyes turn pink in color (although they do!) but because they look smaller when the area around them is inflamed.
Ok, I was watching the History Channel not to long ago and “Time Lab 2000 with Sam Waterstein” came on. He said that back a long time ago, (I KNOW I’m going to spell this wrong, so don’t get on my case) like in the midieval times, blue was considered a lucky color for boys to wear because it warded away evil spirits. Of course, it was imperitive to protect the boys, especially the oldest. So why was girls dressed in pink? Because pink complimented blue.
Carnations are often called ‘pinks’ by market traders no matter what colour they are.
They are so named after the edges of the petals which have a serrated edge which is known in the clothing industry as pinking.
No they aren’t. My family operates a florist, I’ve talked to hundreds of florists and growers in several different countries, and I’ve never heard anyone refer to carnations as pinks. If you ask a florist or floral supplier for pinks, you will not get carnations.
Not all cultures consider pink to be effeminate. In the German army in WWII, the panzer troopers wore pink trim on their collars and epaulettes.
I always wondered how come in the ultraconformist 1950s, the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit was supposed to wear a pink shirt to the office. Where’d that come from? You’d think the least hint of effeminateness would have been verboten in that culture.
Hmmmm… no wonder they lost!
but didn’t the Germans use pink triangles to distinguish homosexual concentration camp inmates? I seem to remember that from the Dachau tour…