In your
travels, you may have noticed that men and women are just a little bit
different – in appearance, in ability, in preferences. And one of the more visible, and persistent,
distinctions is in color preference – pink for women, blue for men.
But is
it true? Do women and young girls truly prefer pink, do men and young boys truly
prefer blue? And, if so, is it something
that we learn (pink, as it happens, continues to be the most popular iPhone
color for females) or simply innate?
Writes
American neuroscientist Lisa Eliot, author of “Pink Brain, Blue Brain”:
“In the past decade, we've heard a lot about
the innate differences between males and females. So we've come to accept that
boys can't focus in a classroom and girls are obsessed with relationships:
‘That's just the way they're built’."
But
Eliot insists that we make way too much of innate gender differences – most
prominent of which is the pink-blue myth. Eliot’s website explains: “. . .
infant brains are so malleable that small differences at birth become amplified
over time, as parents, teachers, peers — and the culture at large — unwittingly
reinforce gender stereotypes. Children themselves exacerbate the differences by
playing to their modest strengths. They constantly exercise those ‘ball-throwing’
or ‘doll-cuddling’ circuits, rarely straying from their comfort zones.”
By all
appearances, society (ever so slowly) is heading toward gender equality – more
men raising families, more women performing surgery. There remain, of course, noticeable and
disturbing gaps (e.g., salaries in the workplace), but by and large the
worldwide movement is afoot (though at times we pause to realize that women’s
suffrage is less than 100 years old!).
Which
leads us back to the pink-blue myth. Study after study continues to dispel the
notion, yet it persists.
It
wasn’t always this way. Looking back a century,
Polly Curtis, writing for theguardian.com reports: "In 1914, the Sunday
Sentinel told American mothers: 'If you like the colour note on the little
one's garments, use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a
follower of convention'." Fast forward a decade when a chart in Time magazine
stated that “boys should be dressed in pink and girls in blue,” according to an
article at kidssocialnorm.com. The
article continued: “Pink was for boys because it was a powerful color. Blue was
designated to girls because it was considered delicate and dainty. Pink was
also associated with the ‘fiery’ male temperament, while blue was associated
with the Virgin Mary and the purity and goodness of a little girl.”
Gender
differences, historians report, began to fade in the 1960s when the women’s
liberation movement took hold (an article by Jeanne Maglaty for
smithsonianmag.com noted that, for two years in the 1970s, the Sears Roebuck
catalog pictured no pink toddler clothing). And the move toward gender
neutrality continued until the mid-1980s, when pink vs. blue began to re-emerge
(the re-emergence is believed tied to the start of parental testing).
So what
are we to make of pink vs. blue? Does it
serve our children well?
Says
author and historian Jo Paoletti: “The loss of neutral clothing is something
that people should think about more. And there is a growing demand for neutral
clothing for babies and toddlers now, too.” And this isn’t just a U.S.
phenomenon, as noted by Curtis in her piece for theguardian.com: “. . . I'm
always struck when I visit my daughter's cousins in Sweden that children's
clothing in particular is much less gendered than in England. Babies tend to
wear more uni-sex bright patterns than pale pink and blues.”
Other
points to consider:
·
Under
the age of two, children exhibit no color preference, according to Curtis,
citing work by Professor Melissa Hines at Cambridge University;
·
Children
become conscious of their gender around 3-4 years old, and do not realize it’s
permanent until age 6 or 7, according to Maglaty, citing research by child
development experts; and
·
A
famous 1978 study demonstrated how differently adults treated the same baby depending on whether they
were dressed in pink vs. blue.
So if
you see me walking by you today in a pink fedora, don’t be alarmed. It’s a
power color.
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