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

Yesterday, February 12, would have been my mother's 90th birthday. In her memory, I decided take a close look at children's fashion in the year of her birth. As the third child born to a young German Lutheran minister and his wife in rural Canada, I doubt if she ever wore any of the fancier styles shown here, but family photos certainly confirm the rules of appropriate clothing for children under 7. 

Babies from birth to around 6 months: long white gowns, ranging from minimally embellished to elaborately trimmed with lace and embroidery.

Babies from six months to a year or slightly older: short white dresses and one-piece rompers. Again, these could be plain or fancy, depending on the occasion and the family's budget and needlework talents.

Gender differences were introduced between one and two years, with little boys exchanging dresses for short trousers, often attached to their shirts or blouses with buttons at the waistline. Little girls stayed in dresses, but in an array of colors. 

Here's a video I created for the occasion:

In the last few years, there's been a growing trend for pink clothing for men. For far, it hasn't affected the diaper demographic, but it's encouraging. This article from India suggests that color reversal promises to be big news there this year. 

Baby announcements, gift and greeting cards from the UCLA Biomedical Library collection of Baby Books. The shower cards were received before the baby was born. Announcements were often purchased or made in advance, and filled out afterwards. Notice the use of blue for girls and pink for boys in the 1910s and 1920s, and the use of pink and blue in combination for both boys and girls.

The most frequent question I am asked is "When did pink become a feminine color?" It may seem simple -- it certainly did to me when I first went looking for an answer about thirty years ago -- but the answer actually depends on several factors. I have noticed that even when an article about my research is based on an interview with me, the author may try to settle on a single date rather than relate the whole messy tale. I completely understand. It took me an entire chapter in my book to answer that "simple" question! Here goes:

If you mean "When was pink first considered a feminine color by some culture somewhere in the world", I have no idea. Color symbolism is highly culture-specific and variable. (Consider, for example, that white was the traditional color of mourning in Japan at the same time that black had the same meaning in most of Europe.) It is clear that in most of Europe and America in the 19th century and early 20th century, pastel colors were considered "youthful" and were used more often to flatter the complexion, not denote gender. Pink was considered more flattering for brown-eyed, brown-haired people and blue for blue-eyed people. (Green and yellow were preferred for red-heads, and I have anecdotal evidence that lavender was sometimes used for African-American babies, but not enough to be confident in that claim.) When pink or blue were used in gendered ways, it seemed to be a matter of fashion -- a temporary trend -- not a tradition. Nor were they used consistently the way we do today (pink=girl, blue=boy).

Between (very) roughly 1900 and around 1940, there was a movement towards more gender distinction in clothing, first for toddlers and then for babies, including more frequent use of pink and blue to signify gender. There was also quite a bit of confusion among clothing manufacturers and retailers about which was which, as they tried to settle on one rule for the entire country. (See the table from 1927 in the image gallery)

Between around 1940 and the mid-1980s, the pink=girl, blue=boy convention was nearly uniform, but not completely so. This was still variable by region in the United States. There were German Catholic areas in Nebraska which used blue for girls as late as the early 1980s, and I have seen pink clothes for boys from the deep South from the 1970s. In addition, it was not yet the very rigid use of pink we've seen recently. Pink was an option for girls, and it was quite possible to avoid it. (I seldom wore pink or pastels as a little girl in the 1950s; my mother preferred to dress me in deeper colors, especially shades of blue.) Pink was by far the most common color used for first birthday cakes, for example, and pink and blue were used together in baby announcements, receiving blankets, toys and clothing for both boys and girls. 

What has changed since the 1980s? First, pink became so strongly associated with femininity, that when a boy or man wears it is is no longer "just a color", but an act of defiance or personal expression beyond the aesthetic. Second, it eventually crowded out other colors in the options for babies and little girls. Finally, pink has been adopted by manufacturers of thousands of products as a way to differentiate their wares and sell more items, especially for children.

So there it is. Before 1900, pink and blue were two of a range of pastels appropriate for babies and children, symbolic of gender to the same extent that shamrocks symbolized luck -- in a light-hearted, fanciful way, not a moral imperative. From 1900 to around 1940, their modern associations were taking shape, but were often reversed in some parts of the United States, and still not taken too seriously. From around 1940 until the mid-1980s, pink and blue had their now-familiar associations, with regional exceptions and lots of other options. Since around 1985, pink has been not only a strong symbol of femininity, but neutral and non-pink options have been gradually edged out. 

Sorry this is so long. But as you can see, the question may seem simple, but the answer is not!

I am in Boston for the Social Studies History Association conference, where I gave a paper on (surprise!) the history of pink as a gender signifier. Dominique Grisard, a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago, organized the (amazing) panel on girls as consumers and gave a paper drawn from her current research on pink. It's part of her own book-length project, "Pink. En/Gendering a Color", which can't be published soon enough. In it, she will bring a more theoretical consideration of pink"s complicated symbolism from a transnational perspective. The morsel she offered at SSHA was a tasty preview. Looking at Jenna Lyons and her son's pink toenails, Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella Ate My Daughter and the movement to accept gender nonconforming boys, Dominique observed the following (my paraphrasing):

When princess boys adopt stereotypical signifiers of femininity, it is defended as performing their authentic selves. When girlie girls embrace the same signifiers, it is critiqued as adopting an artificial construction imposed by consumer culture. 

So which is it?

I had a great email exchange yesterday with French-born Agnès Loncke of Bruges, Belgium, who had seen an article about my work. She wrote:

Well, when my sister and I got our boys in the late 60's and 70's, I was surprised we got pink clothes. In Belgium it was pink for the boys and light blue for the girls, also for the sugar 'dragées'.  In France it was the opposite, though, pink for the girls...Pink is not a boy's colour but the colour of life and good for babies of both sexes. There is however no problem dressing boys in light blue.

Of course, that was forty years ago, and even in the United States there were still localities where pink was the color for boys, or at least acceptable in multicolored stripes or polka dots. Judging from today's websites and catalogs from Belgium, pink is more often used for girls and less for boys. What is different from the U.S. is the much larger availability of colors other than pink for girls, and of neutral designs. Take a look at the Prémaman catalog and you'll see. I like their maternity clothes, too. Notice the overwhelming preponderance of neutral styles for car seats, strollers, baby carriers and other accessories. Except for the First Years potties, available in two Disney-themed option: cars and princess.