Pink & Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America

As you can see, I was a bald baby. A bald baby named Jo, no less. In this picture I am wearing a white batiste dress, which makes me look at least a little feminine, unless you consider that it was a hand-me-down from my brother. (Yes, in the late 1940s, some baby boys still wore little white dresses.)

If my mother had really cared that my sex was clearly discernable by strangers, she would have stuck a ribbon on my head, or made a frilly headband out of lace-covered elastic. Bad Mommy!

Today's little girls are so lucky! Not only do they have entire pink, girlie wardrobes and high heels just for them, but now they don't have to suffer the indignity of baldness.

Because everyone knows that REAL girls have long hair.

(The pink tutu isn't a big enough hint?)

I continue to collect anecdotes about uses of pink outside the United States. Today's story comes from a Finnish woman living in Saudi Arabia, and she includes wonderful pictures as well. Note the snippet about the gendered meanings of not only pink clothing but long hair/short hair. We don't talk much about hair in the U.S. anymore; why might that be? It seems that long hair for boys and men became as much of a non-issue as pants for women and girls sometime in the 1970s.

Finally, a teaser: I acquired a Fall/Winter 1962 Sears catalog yesterday. Scans to come!