Day 119 - Pretty Pink, Baby Blue

A new commentator on this blog made the remark that buying things so far in advance of our baby's entrance in to the world would mean they would be 'out of date' by the time s/he arrived. I hope that this was a facetious comment, but regardless commented in my response something to the effect that I didn't think the baby would particularly notice.

Obviously the baby won't notice. Of course it's not going to turn its nose up at a changing mat because Toys 'R' Us have updated the catalogue and it's soooo last season! It's a) a newborn baby and b) ...actually a) suffices unless you're a bit simple.

If the baby isn't going to notice whether its changing mat is out of fashion, it therefore follows that the baby isn't going to give a monkeys what its wearing. If proof is needed, just watch how it cacks on everything indescriminately. So - and this is not a terribly clever or original point I'm about to make - it should be obvious that putting the baby in clothes of pink or blue according to gender is not something the baby is remotely interested in. I know it stands to reason but it's worth saying that a newborn doesn't have the necessary ability to understand gender-nuancing of particular colours. Therefore, we must conclude that putting girls in pink and boys in blue is down to the parents placing their prejudices/thought systems onto the children.

But how conscious is it? Why, for example, should we associate pink with femininty and not masculinity? Is there an inate physical, measurable property of the colour pink that makes it more appropriate for females? Are we, for example, to believe that female eyes are modified to respond better to pink/red light than blue and the reverse in boys? Well, no. Obviously not.

So what's it all about? What's behind this? I had no idea, so I've done a bit of digging and this is what I've found.

According to a series of books called The History of Private Life there was virtually no gender differntiation in infants prior to the Regency in 1830. They weren't even called 'he' or 'she', just 'it'. Sure, there was the interest in whether a male heir had been produced, but in terms of the infant itself, it wasn't regarded as important until about five years of age.

What about colours? Well, from the late 18th century, children of both sexes typically wore white, which in western cultures was associated with innocence (and it's notable that even this is not universal. In Japan, for example, white is the colour of death and mourning). Where colours were worn, they seem to be done so interchangably. Whilst one might think of Gainsborough's famous Blue Boy, there is also a lesser known companion piece, the Pink Boy.

In fact, if there is a preference at all, prior to World War Two it's pretty universal throughout the first world that girls wore blue, and boys pink! Blue was associated with faithfulness and chastity. Pink, a watered down red, was associated with ferocity, the colour of blood. Such colour associations were routinely reported in home-making publications until the Second World War. So, what changed at the time of World War Two? It's not clear.

I've read a suggestion that it was the association of the pink triangle with homosexuality in the Nazi death camps that was responsible. I'm not sure how I feel about this suggestion. Some aspects of it seem quite credible. The pink triangle has certainly been claimed as a symbol by gay people and perhaps as they've become more accepted (or, perhaps more pertinantly, more open) in society, so the association has become stronger, but I wonder whether this isn't but one facet at best. It seems to me a bit strange that a negative association built on homophobia -'don't put boys in pink; that's a homosexual colour' would necessarily translate into pink being preferred for girls, even allowing some latidtude for notions of homosexuality being effeminate. It could certainly be a part of it, but the whole thing..? It seems unlikely, especially given that the change is noted around about WW2 and homosexuality was very much underground until well into the sixties in much of the West.

So, where did the pink for girls come from? I still don't know, I've just found references to say the change occured about the time of WW2. Barbie..?

Any ideas, gratefully received.

I don't expect this to change anything particularly. To whatever extent we're likely to dress any child in one colour or the other, I doubt it will change much just because it was different in the past, but if we did, it's nothing to get het up about. It won't do anything to a baby that's too young to understand the associations being made and indeed, why those associations are completely arbitrary.