Why is pink considered a “girl’s” color and blue a “boy’s” color?
Because the Pink stork brings the girls and the blue stork brings the boys, silly
Or so mother always told me…
Upham
IIRC baby boys were wraped in an expensive blue fabric to ward off evil spirits or something like that back in the olden days. Girls were not thought as important enough to invest in the anti-evil spirt color- so they got whatever the parents could get. I think pink came later just because boys had a color.
Not even sure that is true, but sounds good.
Been there, done that:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=32984
I think K2Dave is right, except for one thing. Pink was chosen because it complimented the boys’ blue.
Here comes Peace with a scientific explanation: the X chromosome is pink under the microscope, the Y chromosome is blue (H&E).
In this thread, it was pointed out that German tank battalions wore pink on their epaulettes. The US Army for a time also sported pink as part of their dress uniforms, also called “pinks” although I believe it was restricted to trousers and one could choose OD ( olive drab ) instead. Please correct if I am mistaken.
Q
In the US army, “pink” was a slang term for the color of the trousers. The army specs claim that it was a lighter shade of Olive Drab, although in the pictures I’ve seen, it looks more gray than olive. My father, who served in the war, told me the trousers were gray.
A couple of the best-known paintings are **The Blue Boy **by Thomas Gainsborough and Pinkie by Sir Thomas Lawrence, now in the Huntington Museum’s collection.
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0873281705.01.LZZZZZZZ.gif
These were widely distributed as posters at the dawn of paper printing of artworks, and appeared in some classroom in every school I’ve been in as icons of romantic youth.
