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Was pink once a boys color?

8/27/2015

I get quite a few questions something like this:

DIDN'T PINK AND BLUE SYMBOLISM USED TO BE THE OPPOSITE?

or

WASN'T PINK A BOY COLOR A HUNDRED YEARS AGO?

The short answer is "not quite". Yes, boys used to wear pink, and there were even places in Europe (Belgium, for example) that reversed the gendered use of pink and blue. But it was never as universally considered a "boy color" in the way that pink has been a "girl color" since the mid-1980s. I use that date because as late as the 1970s it was possible to find places in the US where pink was either used for boys or used along with blue as "baby colors" in a neutral way.

Consider this note found in a documentation file I was cleaning today:

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"Masculine" and "Feminine": Descriptive or lazy?

8/25/2015

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Bless Pam Keuber over at retro renovation. She boldly posted an open thread discussion of the question that has been cooking in my brain for months, if not years:

Should we use the terms “feminine” and “masculine” to describe decorating styles?

Or clothing, for that matter? Or personality traits? "Masculine" and "feminine" are sort of passive descriptors, which don't actually tell you anything about how something looks, but point to cultural stereotypes. In my opinion, "urban", "tribal" and "exotic" are used in similar ways. In order to "get" the meaning of the word, you have to be familiar with the cultural reference. (If your brain translated those to into stereotyped images of African Americans, sub-Saharan African design or Southeast Asians, congratulations! Your consumer culture wiring is working as media producers and marketers hoped it would!)

As my research on the history of pink symbolism shows, pink is only "feminine" in a specific recent cultural context. The same is true of nearly all of the details we think of as "girly". To use "feminine" to describe something as "pink" or "elaborately decorative" is meaningful only in that narrow context. But beyond that context, it is not a terribly useful word. Describing both the boy and the girl in the paintings below as "feminine" is lazy (not to mention historically inaccurate).

"The Pink Boy", Thomas Gainsborough, 1782

"Pinkie", Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1794

This is not political and it certainly isn't "politically correct". It's two things I care deeply about: good writing and placing individual differences over categorical differences. If your son is reading two years above grade level, would you want to see him placed in a special boys' reading group because "boys don't read as well as girls"? Hell, no! Should your daughter automatically get the princess toothbrush at the dentist instead of the one with the rocket ship because "most girls like princesses"? Again, no. Does your son's reading ability make him feminine? Is your daughter's love of space science "mannish"? No, no, no, NO! Is Serena William's body "masculine"? Don't even go there.

So don't be lazy. Use your active adjectives!

Instead of "masculine", try tailored, functional. or understated. If by "feminine", you mean delicate, ruffled, or pastel, just say so!

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Was pink once a boys color?

"Masculine" and "Feminine": Descriptive or lazy?

Should we use the terms “feminine” and “masculine” to describe decorating styles?

Jo Paoletti

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