aha! I knew that! But no one believes me when I tell them :(

Thanks for this post! It really highlights how separate socialization is from "truth." What's ridiculous is that both colors are pastel. Pastel blue hardly seems to fit the idea of a macho man, which is what I guess people think when they specifically use blue for boys.

I'm so glad my mom was an independent thinker! My room was basically yellow and white and my brother had red, white and navy blue b/c he was born on July 4th. And growing up, medium blue was my favorite color.

This is why I buy yellow or green gifts for every single baby shower I go to (with ten women in my company expecting, there've been a lot this Spring).

yeah i get everyone green or red or yellow things for their babies.

I've never liked these color "combinations." My mom always tried to put me in pink clothes as a child and I'd fight to stay out of it.
To this day, I try to convince her that pink doesn't necessarily mean it's for girls.

This gender stuff drives me nuts - thanks for pointing out how utterly made up it is. You wouldn't know it by how strongly people cling to it.

A little question, though: how does your friend know her baby's gender already? I didn't realize there were technologies to determine such things in utero. Really, though, sex is not gender, as I suspect you know.

I usually stick with yellow and green myself. (I'd go with non-pastels if I could, but there's a limited supply). For the folks who do buy into the color coding, I say "that way you can give them to a friend after the baby outgrows them in .5 seconds." I will never buy anything pink for my neice - her grandmother has that covered! I just try and de-program her from the Disney Princess stuff.

This is soo true! I, for instance, love the color pink, but that's not because I am a girl, but it's just because my eye/brain is attracted to it. Just as how I also LOVE the color black. The most recent baby shower, (the baby was a girl) I ended up buying some booties that were purple. Purple isn't seen too often around my family. Pink, sadly, is...

I hate pink!

I swear when I have a daughter someday - I'm not buying her anything pink. And I will return or take back anything given to her that is pink!

Trisha - as a father of a daughter who tried to get only gender neutral colours, I can tell you that many people will be offended by your policy.

I had the best of intentions, but I just don't have a lot of money. I need all the help I can get, and with the sheer quantity of baby clothes we've received as gifts from friends and relatives, clothing her hasn't been an issue. But it's mostly pink.

As soon as she was born and people knew it was a girl, there was a flood of pink. Pissed me off, really, as I'd like to re-use it and we could well have a boy next. If we do, he'll be wearing a lot of pink.

I also try to stay gender-neutral in what I pick out or make for a baby... right now I'm knitting a little brown argyle vest with white and bluish-purplish diamonds. I do have to say, however, that I do find it handy to have some sort of signal on whether the baby is a boy or a girl-- I hate misidentifying the sex of a baby and having the parent correct me, oftentimes in a snippy tone (like, whatever, it's not as though little girls and boys look all that much different at that age anyway!)

I was actually pondering buying a pink onesie and a blue onesie for my sister who is expecting twins. But she's expecting two girls, which is why I was pondering this....because I like to screw with people's mental expectations. :)

In the extremely unlikely event that I get pregnant and have a baby, no one is going to know the sex until it's born. And even then, I'll probably ask for no pink or blue. Because, no. I don't even like those colors (esp. pink) in pastel.

But I have a cousin with a very bald girl baby who hates it when people mistake her daughter for a boy. She even wraps one of those rubber band ribbons around the poor girl's head. I just don't get it. So what if people mistake the sex?

But as we all know from "It's Pat!" gender confusion is uncomfortable to most people.

I wonder what caused the color paradigm to flip like that.

I don't see why people wouldn't want to accept green and yellow clothing. What if they have another kid and it's a different sex?

I went to a friend's baby shower last summer, and I was surprised that such an enlightened feminist woman wanted all blue clothes for her baby boy. I mean, that's her decision, but I was still surprised.

Personally, I like green and yellow on babies. It's just prettier to me. And it's not so bad if you're asked if your baby is a girl or boy, is it?

To Matthew, I think it's quite rude that your family and friends bought a bunch of pink stuff for your daughter. You're the parent, and your family and friends have to respect the way you bring up your kids.

FYI Trisha, just because you don't like pink may not discourage your potential daughter from wearing it. My aunt swore the same thing when her daughter was born; the kid turned out to be a complete girly-girl who insisted on pink, sparkles, ribbons, flowers, the works. You can't fight the person your kid is destined to be.

FYI Trisha, just because you don't like pink may not discourage your potential daughter from wearing it. My aunt swore the same thing when her daughter was born; the kid turned out to be a complete girly-girl who insisted on pink, sparkles, ribbons, flowers, the works. You can't fight the person your kid is destined to be.

Maybe, but it seems a little crass to specify what colour of gift you wish to receive, and in my mind it is even worse to reject a gift due to not liking the colour. Especially unexpected gifts presented in public by people who are made very happy by your receiving them.

What's done is done. I'm also dead serious that if our next child is a boy, he's wearing pink. Because I don't care, and neither does my wife.

Red was the colour of soldiers' uniforms and blue was what the Virgin Mary wore. That's the reasoning behind it.
So it was still gender role prescription ;)

Matthew, that's great that you are going to reuse the pink clothes if you have a son. I know plenty of women who MAY have their baby girls in some blue, but I don't know ANYONE who would put their boys in pink. So, kudos. If I ever have a kid (poor kid!) I am going to go the route my friend took- not tell anyone/find out the sex. Seriously, after watching what every else is going through with gender color-coded gifts, it's complete insanity.

the funny thing about all this (though it doesn't matter for clothing) is that babies can't even *see* pastels when they're born! If you want to get a non clothing gift like a mobile or something, it'd better be bright primary colors or black and white for them to even notice it :)

If I am ever pregnant I will keep the sex of the baby a secret so that people buy me "neutral" stuff. If they ask why I won't tell the sex, I will tell them I don't want gendered gifts.

I'm with Sarah MC. I don't think that I even want to know the sex of my potential child, let alone tell the others so that they can initiate the flood of pink.

I used to work at a gift store that included some baby products and I was blown away by how insistent people were on being able to buy the "correct" colour of baby present, especially as I and all my siblings (male and female alike) were yellow and green all the way.

Recently I was talking with a lesbian aquaintance whose partner had gotten pregnant, and she was telling me about how she had to know the sex of the child as soon as possible so that she could start decorating the nursery in "the right colour". I was surprised that she would be so eager to perpetuate those kinds of gender stereotypes. It just goes to show you how pervasive these things are.

Very interesting historical fact there!

My sister had a baby in January. She knew it was going to be a boy and, boy, did I ever have a hell of a time finding gender-neutral onesies and clothing for lil' Arwynn. I looked around quite a few places and blue was the clear answer. I found one green outfit and another yellow but it was really quite a trial just trying to get those spare pieces. JEEZ.

Since then I've taken up sewing and am starting to collect children's patterns so I can make wee clothing in the fabric of my or my sister's choice. :-)

maybe its a southern thing, or a Charleston thing, but down here, a LOT of men wear pink. I was at a really nice men's clothing store downtown today and they were selling watermelon-colored striped shirts with brightly colored and pastel floral cuffs. I wonder how many guys besides the "southern gentlemen" would wear that.

However, at the church nursery where I work, it's much more commonplace to see little girls wearing blue than little girls wearing pink. Every once in a while, a boy will wear a pink tie or a pink button-up shirt, but usually not when they're younger than 5 or so.

We could be really subversive and try to flip the colors back to how they were by dressing girls in blue and boys in pink. But really, I wonder if doing that would really do much in the way of altering how the baby grows up??? Or does picking a gender neutral color actually effect how the baby grows up, are there any reports, surveys...on this, or is this something that people are doing on principle.

another thought: there is a lot of talk about not wanting to give gendered things to babies so as not to influence them, but how might we apply this to adults, do we ever give gendered gifts to people, like beer to guys and earrings or clothing to girls. Doesn't this sort of gendered gift giving to adults reinforce stereotypes just as much if not more than choosing the color of the clothing a baby will wear.

We didn't know the sex before she was born. That isn't really relevant to how much pink stuff we got. People just waited until after the baby was born, then gave us our gifts.

There was no pre-birth baby shower in our case. Maybe we should organize one for next time, just so we can avoid gender-specific clothing. But we probably won't, 'cause I'm not sure if it's the done thing for a second child.

David, I don't even know if it's a matter of not wanting to influence the baby.
That's part of it - not wanting them to feel so closely connected to a color just because of their sex.
But I generally hate the gendering of colors, beverages, animals, etc., etc. and don't want it to be a big part of my life. So I wouldn't want it to be a big part of my new baby and his/her room and clothing.

This pink/blue stuff is really strange. About eight years ago, I took care of an elderly man in his 90's in a nursing home. This man had owned a grocery store when he was younger, and he liked to wear pink button down shirts all the time. I thought this was strange because I didn't think pink was considered a masculine color for a grown man. Someone told me that back when this man was young, it wasn't unusual for professional men to wear pink button down shirts, and this is what this man liked to wear. That would have been in the 1940's and 50's. I thought that it was ironic that pink was considered a color only a baby girl would wear, but a grown man in that era would wear a pink shirt. It didn't make sense to me.

Virago: "That would have been in the 1940's and 50's. I thought that it was ironic that pink was considered a color only a baby girl would wear, but a grown man in that era would wear a pink shirt."

My Dad was in highschool in the 1950s, and he tells me it wasn't uncommon for teenage boys to wear pink shirts.

matthew,
How is Trishas policy offensive? All shes doing is molding her future daughters environment into a more envolved one. She cant help it if, due to the mass consumption of gender stereotypes, parents choose to reinforce color coded sexism. Shes simply not 'going along with it.' I admire her for it, and would hope other future parents would have the same tenacity and enlightment.

"To Matthew, I think it's quite rude that your family and friends bought a bunch of pink stuff for your daughter. You're the parent, and your family and friends have to respect the way you bring up your kids"

FEMlily,
I second that sentiment. Its up to the parent, not others to determine the kind of environment they want their kid growing up in. Does not a mother have a right to want her daughter to grow up without the same gender boundaries other girls either A. are forced to accept, or B. have to spend their whole lives rebelling against. Its rude to force your perspectives onto the mother and disrespect her determination to give her daughter a better environment, NOT the other way around.

Personally for myself, when it comes time to buy loads o' crap for someones baby shower I will always buy non-blue, and non-pink baby clothes. I think its best for the kid not to associate these colors with the subjective gender molds they are supposed to represent. I mean, when they grow up, theyre going to be indocrinated (as most parents arent exactly enlightened) with all sorts of gender stereotypes, roles, ect and the toys the media sell to each of the genders along with the kinds of clothes that are designated "girls," or "boys," are always segregated either pink OR blue. Sheesh...break it up, you know!

BTW, I HATE PINK!

�This man had owned a grocery store when he was younger, and he liked to wear pink button down shirts all the time. I thought this was strange because I didn't think pink was considered a masculine color for a grown man. Someone told me that back when this man was young, it wasn't unusual for professional men to wear pink button down shirts, and this is what this man liked to wear.� – Virago

I am wearing a pink button down shirt right now. I also have a pink polo shirt I wear from time to time.

Re. refusing gifts based on colour/associations with gender, I still consider it rude to refuse a gift, whatever the reason. If a person has said explicitly that they do not want pink for girls and blue for boys, yes. It is rude to give those anyway. But it is still rude to refuse the gift.

In my specific case, I am thinking specifically of having come back to my office a week after my daughter was born (I took some time off, sadly I couldn't afford to take more) and people had gone ahead and bought a whole whack of pink stuff. Am I to refuse that in front of everybody?

And in the case of my very conservative in-laws, it would also offend them to refuse a gift for a reason they view as silly. Maybe people have a different situation than I do, I suppose. But it would have come across as offensive had I not accepted in both those cases.

I went to China a few months before my cousin's daughter was born. They knew it was a girl, and boy howdy was his wife's shower flooded with pink crap. I, however, bought her a green silk dress in China. Sure, it was still a dress, but it wasn't pink. To be honest, I didn't think in gender terms when picking the color, I just liked the green best out of what was available at the silk place. They had a pink, it was kind of an ugly shade.

The thing is, normally I like pink. Not pastel, ugh, but I do like a saturated hot pink (seriously, my hair has even been that color). And it makes people think I'm a girly girl when I wear it. It has nothing to do with gender roles, I just like the color and it looks nice on me. So does blue. I guess it matters less as an adult.

I don't have (or particularly want) kids, but I do have a female dog. And for some reason it bugs me when people call her a "he." I think part of it is that it's pretty obvious with dogs, just a quick glance and you can see there's no junk hanging down so hey guess what, it's a girl. My mom and I actually battle about her collars though. I had this cool, kind of punk rock red plaid collar with studs and my mom didn't like it because it was to boyish. Same goes with the gray skull and crossbones one. Right now she has a pink collar with black lace on it, which is one of the few my mom and I agree on. Despite the fact that she's my dog so it's my decision, I went for a compromise. Though as I type this I'm considering busting the skull collar back out.

matthew,
perhaps you could dye the clothes?

When my cousin had her baby shower for her baby girl I bought a little green teddy bear for her. Her husband thanked me because he was sick to death of seeing pink.

I have a daughter and I am alarmed by how gendered everything is and how it's become more popular in recent years. 12 years ago when my oldest nieces was born I remember how impossible it was for my mom to find a pink anything for a baby, everything was neutral navy, green and tan. Now, it's impossible to find anything that's gender neutral and their girl's clothing is also made smaller and skimpier then girls (even the toddler sizes). I've just given up and started buying my daughter boy clothing.

I had the opposite experience of some here. I went to a baby shower. She was expecting a boy, and I went and bought yellow towels, a green fleece blanket, and a brown teddy. She was disappointed my things weren't blue - like everything else she got save a fairy tale book.

Personally, I'd really be terrified to dress my young son (far in the future, of course, as I have no children and will not for years) in pink consistantly. Ideally, of course, I believe children shouldn't be raised to believe they are limited in one direction or another by their sex. But on a more practical level, I really don't want to have a "Boy Named Sue" effect on my son(s).

Try finding anything other than pink or blue for infants! Really, I think we have bigger concerns.

"Boy Named Sue" effect on my son(s)."

Weird. This coming from a feminist? I thought you'd be more sagacious than that. Do you believe that clothes make the gender? Its interesting to note, you wouldnt worry about a "Girl named John" effect if you put blue on your girls, but only if its pink on a boy. Are people really this sexist and superstitious?

"I have a daughter and I am alarmed by how gendered everything is and how it's become more popular in recent years. 12 years ago when my oldest nieces was born I remember how impossible it was for my mom to find a pink anything for a baby, everything was neutral navy, green and tan."

Now thats what we need to revive!

I wonder why the decline over the years? I'm simply tossing out a theory: do you think it has anything to do with, "Gen X," and their supposed rebellion against the Boomers? Supposedly (according to mainstream media sources - which captalize on exaggeration) they rebelled against the Boomers by being the opposite of them. By that, they mean, shucking the foundation that the Boomers established that brought about so much progress in society. The kids whose mothers went out and worked felt abandoned and when they grew up they became nesters to compensate for the abandonment they felt. This means that they probably wanted more stereotypical crap that they associated with Old Ways, that represented the times before the Boomers set about progress in this country. The Boomers were the ones who broke the pink/blue dichotomy, and now the generation thats eating up all this gender color coded binary is Gen X, because theyre in their family making years. My generations is to young to have any of this baby crap marketed torwards us. I'm 23, and I'm near the oldest cut-off point for my generation, so it cant be us.

I am so glad you posted this! I tell people about this all the time and I'm glad to have something extra to back it up.

Pink was for boys because the male humours were dry and hot, connected to earth/fire elements and the color red. Female humours were wet and cold, symbolized by blue.

The story I heard was that a baby toy/clothing/bathing(?) advertisement switched the colors to make their ad stand out, but the color swap stuck!

This kind of "fact" is the kind that gets passed through the internet over and over without anybody actually caring to research it.

A little internet research shows many articles refer to the same couple sources over and over. First there is a magazine from 1918 that nobody here can possibly verify. Second there's a newspaper called "The Sunday Sentinal" which is vague enough to not even identify the region or city of it's publication. Interestingly, search for the mispelled "Sunday Sentinal" and you get links all about the same topic. Search for "Sunday Sentinel" and you can no longer trace the supposed source.

Here's something all of you can verify. Read Little Women, chapter 28. It references putting a blue ribbon on the boy and pink on the girl. This is a reference from 1868!

More references from Google book search:

University Studies, 1888: "The boys prefer blue, and the girls purple."

Dancing times, 1900: "Sashes are given at the
christening of a child — blue for a boy, pink for a girl,"

The Kindergarten-primary Magazine, 1888: "...method is being used and the little tots look very picturesque in their little
pinafores of pink and blue, the girls wearing pink and the boys blue."

Through Russia on a Mustang, 1891: "If a boy, the prevailing color will be blue ; if a girl, pink."

That's 5 sources you can verify yourself about this topic. These are primary sources from the time period. Don't believe everything you read on the internet.

For the sake of getting the story right, I don't think it was really a complete reversal. I think babies of both genders were mostly dressed in WHITE. That would explain why there were varying opinions on the "correct" colors - there wasn't really a universal agreement on the subject at the time.

I told this to anyone who would listen back when they did another "baby girls like pink!" study like a year ago. It came up on NPR a few months ago and a woman who was familiar with the study also pointed out that Chinese men also liked pink best, but somehow that never made it into the papers.

I love pink. I love blue. I love every shade and hue.
(the poet in me couldn't resist, it is true though)
pink on a baby girl is so sweet IMO and so is pretty much every other color. Pink looks serene and beautiful. baby blue does too.
Blue happens to be my favorite color. I don't think a color defines ones veiws on feminism, just there veiws on hues.

@billdiamond

I'd also heard un-referenced claims that the blue-for-boys and pink-for-girls pattern hadn't always held. But I agree with you, it's very important not to take urban legend at face value, so I followed your lead and did a little research.

Plugging girl boy pink blue into Google led me immediately to Jo Paoletti, an American Studies professor at the University of Maryland, who writes on clothing and gender. In one of her articles online she does reference the excerpt from Little Women that you mentioned:

The practice of pink for girls and blue for boys was introduced into the United States from France in the mid-19th century; in Little Women, Amy tied a pink ribbon on Daisy, and a blue one on her twin, Demi, "French-style, so you can always tell." But the practice was not common until after World War II, partly because there was considerable disagreement about which color was appropriate for which sex.

I also found references to the paintings "The Blue Boy" and "Pinkie" (a portrait of a girl) being used in pop-culture to support the idea that the modern gender/colour associations have been around for centuries. Unfortunately the two paintings were actually done by different artists, 25 years apart, of children in different period clothing styles, and Gainsborough also did a painting known as "The Pink Boy" in addition to "The Blue Boy".

When I was searching for a picture of "The Pink Boy" I came across this blog article: Why is Blue for Boys and Pink for Girls? which discusses the history of baby clothing fashions (including the fact that dresses were considered unisex clothing for babies in the early 20th century, and the connection of blue-for-boys to changes in military dress post World War I).

This blog post quoted a 1927 Time magazine article about the birth of a Belgian princess whose cradle "was optimistically decorated in pink, the color for boys". Surely another "fact" that gets circulated around the internet... right? So I checked the Times magazine internet archive, and there it was:

an article on Princess Astrid's baby in its pink-for-boys baby carriage ("A Mother", Time magazine, Oct. 24, 1927).

and the follow-up article done a few weeks later when some U.S. newspaper readers threw a fuss over the idea of boys in pink ("Baby's Clothes", Time magazine, Nov 14, 1927).

The second article pointed out that in Catholic countries it was traditional to use Blue (the colour associated with the Virgin Mary) for girls, and pink for boys. They then did a poll of ten leading American retailers (including Macy's and Marshall Field's) that sold baby equipment: 4 complied with Blue/Boy and Pink/Girl, 5 reversed it with Pink/Boy and Blue/Girl, and 1 associated pink with both sexes. The article concluded "There seems, then, to be no great unanimity of U. S. opinion on Pink v. Blue."

So, there we have evidence that, in 1927 at least, the boy=blue pattern was far from entrenched in Western society.

So far as 20th century baby fashions go: My grandfather, who was born in Canada slightly before World War I, is shown in baby photos dressed in white frilly dresses, red boots, and long flowing sausage-curled hair (all of which was perfectly normal at the time).

Until I was about 7 I refused to wear anything other than pink and purple. So, just like Matthew's theoretical son, my younger brother ended up wearing a lot of purple and pink.
Also, I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but rappers like Kanye West have been wearing a lot of pink polos lately. So maybe the trend is getting more gender-neutral.

Hmmm. My only problem with the alternate colors of yellow and green (and orange) is that a lot of skin tones don't look very good in them. There are a lot of very cute froggy and ducky things out there, and we received plenty of them as we refused to find out the sex of our baby beforehand, but our baby looks really nice in lavender. She looks great in pink because her lips and cheeks are very rosy. I do love to dress her in strong colors--red, navy, dark grays, even black--but people always challenge me about those. Why are people so freaked out about ***making sure everyone knows w/o a doubt*** what sex their baby is? Can we really not tolerate that slight ambiguity? Are we really in such a hurry to heap "the right" gender-based toys and clothes all over them?

I read once that men, when polled, said their favorite color on a woman was lighter blue--very romantic, they said. Go figure!

My sister brought up a good point: why are gender specific colors detrimental to society? I thought the point of our cause was to eliminate gender inequality rather than eliminating gender.

If gender specific colors harms our sensibility of gender discrimination, then must we do away with all things gender specific?

@sixsixty

The problems I see with gender specific colours are two-fold:

First it ignores and suppresses individual colour preferences. Kids who don't conform to their gender's designated colour scheme can wind up ridiculed.

Second, society often uses colour coding to indicate which activities and toys are "acceptable" for children of a specific gender. Check out the displays in toy stores, or the dominant colour schemes of some kids cartoons to see this in action.

My room-mate can remember wanting a Popple when he was a little boy, but when he found them at the toy store they were in a pink decorated aisle. He got the message that Popples were meant for girls and felt social pressure not to ask his parents for it. I can remember the same thing happening to me but with Legos (and in my case I ignored the "for boys" message and asked for it anyway).

sixsixty: I thought the point of our cause was to eliminate gender inequality rather than eliminating gender.

Maybe for you, but my idea has always been the elimination of sex inequality, and the elimination of gender is the most surefire way of achieving that.

To clarify, I believe that the aggregate differences between men, women, and whatever else is out there, are insignificant next to individual variation. The idea of gender either asserts otherwise, or else has been watered down to the point of meaninglessness and might as well be stricken from the lexicon anyway.