The Actual History of Pink for Girls and Blue for Boys
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- čas přidán 16. 05. 2024
- It may feel like the idea of pink for girls and blue for boys has long been a part of our society. However, it wasn't that long ago that the lines were far from clear. In fact, the saying was even reversed in many areas! Not only that, but blue and pink weren't even common clothing colors for infants until the 1920s. So what did we use the colors for? And how did they end up being chosen? And why is pink so "girly" now that men refuse to wear it? It turns out that may be a very complex set of questions. But, with a little bit of French and Dutch translation, we may be able to open up some forgotten history.
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00:00 Colorful Myths
02:43 Royal Infants
05:29 Dutch Announcements
09:23 Color Meanings
11:37 Laundry Problems
15:29 Layette Options
17:44 Colorfast Opportunities
21:07 Instituting Gender - Jak na to + styl
We should definitely bring back the idea of 'just dress them in whatever' for the first couple years of life. Less baby consumerism is good.
Yeah, no need to put up barriers to hand-me-downs if the kid is a different gender. A lot of perfectly good clothes get very little wear if a kid grows quickly.
@@eepinwillow my daughters first clothes were boy clothes from a coworker 😂. But I've begged my family to stop buying her new clothes when kids consignment stores are readily available in our towns (aside from her dad's family who don't live near one and his mom can't really leave the house,) my child has so many cheap ass Singaporean clothes from TEMU cuz my family doesn't listen for shit. I just keep giving them to my friend once my daughter outgrows them
@@eepinwillowyou can sell them to a consignment or secondhand shop and make a little dough?
@@alexandrahenderson4368yea but little girls might want to wear girly pieces!
@@oooh19 so might little boys... Stop assigning gender to random fuckin objects and just let kids dress how they want. They're kids not your pet
Oddly enough I was told by my grandmother that in Ireland green was for boys and yellow was for girls but it was very common to interchange it.
Makes sense given the natural dyes that would have been widely available in Ireland before industrialization. Between that and the socio-economic effects of English colonialism, it's little wonder that Ireland would have had its own traditional color associations separate from their British or continental contemporaries.
@@CaseyuptobatExcellent points. I think it's a lovely tradition.
What year was she born?
What was her name?
When I was growing up green and yellow were considered appropriate colors when the sex of the child was unknown
What I find weird is that girls can wear blue and nobody questions it so long as the kid's gender is somehow defined (i.e. the baby is wearing a bow), but people freak out at a boy wearing pink, regardless of cut and accessories.
. . .thats because anything feminin IS Seen AS lesser and degrading. Boys do Not cry IS about Not showing weakness, Like a girl. You throw Like a girl, you throw badly, a man can BE angry, but a Woman IS hysterical and overdramatic.
Liking pink gets linked to being weak and either womanly or a shallow pushover.
ITS sexism against women that ends Up hitting both Sides in the face
Thats cause blue AS a Male conotated Thing IS Not percived AS Bad. But there IS this Connection drawn between weak, childisch Bad and female. Boys dont cry, Kids and girls do, you throw Like a girl, you throw badly, having to Cook AS a man, or worse Clean, IS degrading, IT IS a womans Job.
Also Male IS Always Seen AS the Base Form and female the Perversion from there. Blue AS a Male color, IS Just a normal color, ITS the associated femininity, that makes pink Dangerous. Adam AS the First human was formed perfect and good after the lords own image, but the Woman was only created to Server him and was His downfall . . .
For Most gendered languages Male IS the normal Form, and you can Drive a female Form through adding to IT. Hell you can speach of humanity AS men or menkind . . .
ITS sexism against women that in the end Hits both in the face
Because women being masculine has always been tolerated as "she's trying to move up in life"
Women's role in society is looked down on so dressing even in pink means a man is trying to be a lowly woman 🥴🥲
Similar to if a rich person dressed homeless people would scoff but a poor person who dresses well will be commended
Because misogyny. Even with active discrimination against women outlawed, masculinity is still seen as superior to femininity in most places. Girls also get looked down upon if they're too pink and girly, but when a boy does it, it's him actively "rejecting" the superior option he is "supposed" to take.
Women are viewed (by men) as the Lesser. So a woman trying to act “like a man” is trying to achieve greatness, but a man “acting like a woman” is seen as a fault. “You throw like a girl.” is a classic example. “You run like a girl.” is another. “Like a girl” is used as an insult.
"I have dug so deep that I'm pretty sure that I found dinosaur bones in this rabbit hole" is such an underrated line.
I feel like I'm appreciating Nicole more and more as I watch her videos! The quote you pulled? Adorable! Thanks, Nicole!
She'll bump into CGP Grey and his hunt for the origin of the name "Tiffany" while she's down there!
That got me so hype for this video!
What color were the dinosaur bones? Pink or blue?😉
I heard that part right after reading this
I got very frustrated in the lead-up to the birth of my first child of people asking the sex of my child so they would know whether to get pink or blue baby clothes. I flatly told everyone to buy purple or green or yellow, and I carried that forward with my second child.
I purposefully didn't find out the sex of my first born so that I wouldn't get a bunch of cute baby clothes. I needed diapers, baby carriers, bottles, blankets, wipes, high chairs, etc. It worked! I did get a few cute baby clothes in yellows and greens, but mostly got a bunch of useful things that we really needed.
I figured that, if I had a girl, I'd stick a hair bow to match the yellow/green outfit, and if it were a boy, I'd just leave him bow-less. It worked! (Added bonus: I got to use all that non-gendered clothing for my 2nd child who was the opposite sex.)
I find it weird how people obcess about the Sex, cause yeah IT IS Not gender in that Case of an unborn or barely Born Baby! Like wtf people, why would IT literally Matter? Why?!
It's bizarre how fixated people get on color-- I just want people to buy clothes and blankies with cute animals or clouds or something
@@fairygrove3928 whips? - and then as I thought about it, I realized it was probably wipes, but you got me.
I was told the colours on babies told strangers the gender of the baby 🤷♀️
Now THIS is the kind of random information I come to CZcams for!
Simp.
@@dmacrolensGrump. 😂
"random"
right! I love learning new things!
My daughter was born in 1966. At that time, we lived in Buffalo, New York, where there were a few different ethnic neighborhoods. I remember a lot of Poles and Italians. I used to take my daughter out for walks dressed in a pink bunting that had been trimmed with some lace and some ruffles. More than once, I was stopped by a sweet grandmotherly lady, who always said, "Oh, what a darling little boy you have!"
That happened to my mom in 1974 when my older sister was born. All dressed in pink and bonnet and frills, the local grocer asked if the baby was a boy or girl. My mom was so puzzled.
@@elainepeters8771 This happened to me in the early 2000 with my daughters in the stroller, both wearing pink, hair with bows. An older man asked if they were twin boys- they are 3 years apart! I just took it as him trying to be friendly.
Happened to me with mu daughter in 2000. O think old person default for babies is he.
I'm Polish and I still have my old newborn pillowcase and it's blue. I was born in 1991. Only when more western culture came to our country it had changed. So in mid 90s
Yeah, the blue was for girls because of honoring Mother Mary, her cult is huge in Poland and among catholics.
Pink as exclusive for girls: my mother works in a kindergarten and one boy wet himself and had to change clothes. The kindergarten keeps individual sets of clothes per kid for that purpose, provided by the parents. But this kid didn’t have any stocked with the kindergarten, don’t know, if the parents forgot to give clean clothes to the kindergarten or whatever. So they put him in pink underpants from the general kindergarten funds, so he didn’t have to sit there in wet pants and the parents went wild and accused the kindergarten team of risking their sons psychological health, all because of a pair of pink spare underpants. And the boy probably didn’t think of anything at all…
Those parents need to check themselves.
If anything, acting Like ITS a medical emergency that their child was exposed to a color IS risking ITS psychological health
God forbid he should touch his mother's frilly slip! 😆
I'm concerned for that child. 😔
@@arianewinter4266their... Use their. It is for non human things. They has been used as a singular third person pronoun since the 1300s
Edit: grammar.
Colorblindness is much more common in males than females, and I wonder if that's a factor in the gendering of pink. Wearing pink isn't much fun if you can't see that it's pink. My husband (before we were married) had a pink tie. When I asked him about it he was surprised; he thought it was white. He can't differentiate between red and green, between pink and white, and between purple and blue.
@hannahtikvah - That's a very good point. When living, my brother was completely red-green colorblind (not all red-greens are completely blind to each of the colors - some people see a greenish-red or a reddish-green). Our uncle was completely colorblind (life seemed like a black and white film to him the way he described it). Uncle Benjamin was accepted into the Army Air Corps as a tail gunner in a "flying fortress" during WW2, but could not get a driver's license in civilian life.
When i started dating by now husband i complimented his purple oxford shirt. He was shook. He thought he had two blue ones - not one blue and one purple. He is moderately red/green colorblind. Fortunately, the man has zero qualms about color choices (loves pink, hates that casual menswear does not usually offer it as an option)
When I taught preschool, I identified a little boy as colorblind. I wondered for a while if he was, but the day he beaded a necklace with his "favorite color" (green and red beads), was the day I knew for certain!
My husband is an artist but he regularly calls purples pinks. I don't mean like purpleish pinks. I mean like lavender is a color he will always call pink. He's very likely mildly colorblind but it's so minor that he only really struggles with specific shades of pink and purple. It was something that I thought possible for years and I genuinely wonder if it was part of why he struggled in art classes growing up because he didn't get into art until adulthood.
@@bboops23 my husband also makes art. He used to go by the handle Colorblind Artist. People would complement his unusual color choices and combinations, and it was because they were not the colors he thought they were.
Unreasonably amused by "guessing at what the appearance of the small visitor will be."
"Pink is going to the market, Blue is going to the golf course." That really says it all.
On another note, I'm okay if it was more like pink is more popular among girls or the opinion that blue looks better on women rather than the absolute rule of pink is ONLY for girls and blue is for boys. It's also stupid that while girls and women can get away with wearing any color, if a boy and man wear pink it somehow emasculates them. It's just a color!
I like the idea of white being a genderless color used for the baby's first few years. Modern baby showers put more of an emphasis on the gender of the baby rather than the actual arrival of the baby, regardless of gender.
The thing with gender marketing is: It will have an impact for as long as anything female (like "girlish" colours such as pink, or "girlish" hobbies such as horse riding, dancing, ballet, make up...) is considered to be less. You are such a girl/p@ssy works as an insult, you are such a boy does not. Guess why. It´s 2024 and we still value anything female as less important. And with a society in wich we actually have more rigid, stupid and binary gender norms every year, it will not change.
But white is really the opposite of what you want on a baby when it comes to modern laundering
When I was very young I had to buy a shirt and a tie and I went to a shop with a female friend of mine
She insisted to buy a pink shirt and a matching color tie
At the beginning I was NO WAY but eventually convinced me
The amount of compliments I received from women later that Evening was a huge surprise for me
Few years later I was Engaged with my now days wife wearing a similar color shirt
By my wife's demand
It's really interesting how women see a masculine side on pink while men are literally afraid of it 😏
My dad wears several pink stuff. Noone ever thought it emasculates him, probably because the way the said clothes is styled is obvious masculin. It shows it is not that strict and you don't need to be femboy to wear pink.
In the novel Little Women, 1869, when Meg had her twins they "put a pink ribbon on the girl and a blue one on the boy, French fashion."
I remember in "Little House on the Prairie" that Laura wanted blue ribbons but wasn't allowed to wear them as she had brown hair. Blue was for Mary and Nellie with their blonde locks.
@@KlingonPrincess And the day when Ma was in a rush and put the "wrong" ribbons on them and they were so happy to wear a different color they didn't say anything.🤭
There's also the 1953 Disney version of "Peter Pan" that has Wendy in light blue and little Michael in a pink sleeper.
@@janleonard3101 I'll look for that version of "Peter Pan," thanks!
I was trying to remember that passage from the book; my copy isn't handy at the moment. Thank you for posting!
Because Meg obviously couldn't tell the difference between her boy twin and her girl twin without the colored ribbons....🙄🙄
My teenage son was talking to me about this literally two days ago! He even spoke correctly about the history of it (topical as I'm planning a baby shower). I was surprised he knew this! Just sent him your video with renewed faith in his public school education. Here's hoping he learns more from the video!
What a great mom you are ❤ keep it up ❤
I used to work for a major infantswear company & we noticed sales for yellow clothing dropped drastically in Spanish speaking areas. Found out that it was because yellow was associated with death, particularly stillbirth.
Yikes!
Oops
I have this theory, that yellow IS the color of evil
Intrusive thought: is gold yellow? Were does it fit on the evil scale?
@@Grace-ms7un Yes but also no.
"It's way more complicated than we thought and no one could agree on it" is honestly a good microcosm for gender as a whole.
me, (before I got to 8 minutes in), curiously asking my Dutch husband if this is still A Thing in the Netherlands. his response cracked me up. "Great. The Netherlands. The original creators of the Gender Reveal party." ... :rofl:
😂😂😂
That actually makes so much sense.
When my baby was about 9 months old I was picking him up at daycare and thought “oh, who is the new little girl?”
It was my son, in emergency back up clothes, that I gendered “girl” because the black and white shirt had tiny ruffles at the shoulder.
Which goes to show that even the littlest thing can be taken as a gender cue, because at that age you can’t tell by anything else!
Which IS probably a good Tell, that WE should Not Care either and Stop forcing stupid gender expectations on Kids that literally could Not Care less.
Funny how ITS the conservative anti queer Agenda people WHO are the Most obcessed with a Babys sex
I’m an AFAB person and I remember getting irritated at a middle school friend who said I “looked like a boy” in my baby pictures - not because I felt misgendered (literally impossible for me), but because IMO all babies just look like… babies. 🤷
In the Laura ingalls wilder books, Laura, who has dark hair, wears red/pink, Mary, who has fair hair wears blue...
This was similar in my family. We’re all girls but we each got “assigned” a color for gifts. I (dark hair) got pink, middle sister (blonde) got blue, and the youngest (also dark hair) got purple.
@@k80_ This is making me think of the Fossil sisters in Ballet Shoes who all have a special necklace - Pauline (blonde) has turquoises, Petrova (brunette) has pearls, and Posy (redhead) has coral - and when they receive watches one year they come with a dress strap that matches the necklace colour.
I remember reading old books where those rules for matching colors with hair/complexion were described and you know what? They make a lot sense. I have since tried to pay attention not just to what color I like but rather to what color looks better on me.
My husband was an identical twin and he and his brother each had an assigned color, His was green (his brother blue) and during our early marriage he didn't like to wear green because he was sick of it.
Until Laura is a teenager, then she sometimes wears blue to match her eyes.
@theoriginalsuzycat, I did find that interesting because a lot of other 19th-20th century literature says redheads should never wear pink because it clashes. Posy is one of the few fictional redheads I know of from that era that gets dressed in pink on purpose.
Dutch person here, did a little more digging into the lace kraamklopper thing and found a newspaper column written by a historian living in Haarlem. He writes that it goes back even further to 1525 and that it wasn't limited to just Haarlem and Alkmaar or new mothers. For instance, sick people would wrap their door knockers in linnen and for newly born babies they used, you guessed it, white cloth. So anyone who needed rest and didnt want to be disturbed could use it I guess. Kinda like putting your phone on airplane mode. Pretty cool.
I'm a man and I love pink. I don't wear pink but use it a lot on my art as it is a claming soothing colour. All colours, even beauty have healing properties. Pink of dawn and dusk, makes me feel like a heavenly realm
Im a guy and I wear pink
I'm a woman and I kinda hate pink. Blue is my favourite colour through and through
Vaginas are often pink as well as signs of sexual arousal in pale skinned women. Also flowers in bloom and things intended to attract mostly men, men or pollinators..
Me too, I love cool colors in general, and schemes that go from blue to pink and purple have a super chill feel
Yeah. I have one of each. Put them both in purple, aqua, beige… mean ole mommy and when folx asked if my baby was a boy or a girl I’d say “oh it’s a baby!!”
LOVE this response! I'm totally using this when my baby is born XD
Nice. I always responded to the "do you think it's going to be a girl or boy" baby shower games with "I am absolutely positive it will be a baby." And all the baby blankets I crocheted when all my friends were getting pregnant were purple.
I used to just say Yes, it is. A boy or a girl.
I love the idea of you saying that in a slightly shocked or condescending tone as if they are crazy for asking
I'm Dutch. Dutch people still decorate their house, yard., window, front door when a baby is born. Nine out of ten times it will be bleu and pink. So. Boy or girl. Sometimes they will use another pastel colour. They will put a sign out with the name of the baby as well. And sometimes leave it for a ridiculously long time
The pink/blue idea continues into adulthood. A few years ago I distributed used clothing for our local homeless folks. Pink was considered such a taboo color by the men that they would refuse a pink clothing item, such as a t-shirt, even if that was the only one in their size at the moment. Even any pink(ish) warm clothing or blanket in the winter. Purple as well.
What an unfortunate mindset about clothing colors!
I'm in my 70s now and for as long as I can remember Pink has been my least favorite color. I remember being upset when I found out that Lionel trains made a pink steam engine train just for girls. I wanted black just like real steam engines. Now I seen pink handguns, pink camo clothes, pink college apparel no matter what the school's colors are, and just about everything in a pink version. Just because women and girls are suppose to like pink?
@rosanneclouston9847 - I believe that Victoria's Secret had a lot to do with that resurrection of pink-for-females when they started their "think pink" campaign some years ago and plastered it across the butt of their pink sweat pants. >_
All my handguns are black. They seem to shoot the same.
Have you heard of the term "pink tax"? It's where exactly the same item is sold except for the colour (or sometimes even just the labelling), and the one aimed at women is more expensive.
I like pink. When it reflects on my skin, I look flushed and healthy. Blue doesn't do much for me in that respect. My absolute favourite colour is green because plants are green, but pink is pretty.
Some years back, a doofus of a (male) legislator in Wisconsin thought that getting "blaze pink" added to blaze orange as acceptable colors for deer hunting clothes would get more women interested in hunting. I and every other woman hunter I know rolled our eyes--if you're up for the mud & blood involved in hunting, you're not silly enough to be avoiding it based on the color of the clothes you wear for *safety.*
The change passed, but since most other states still only have blaze orange you don't see much in the way of blaze pink hunting gear on sale anyway. Plus pink flagging tape is used in some places to mark fencelines, so wearing it there would be downright dangerous--no one worries about accidentally shooting a piece of barbed wire!
The Virgin Mary and blue thing was still a think when I was born in the 80's. My Flemish and very Catholic great-grandma sent all blue girls cloths after I was born. She said it was because blue was the color of the Virgin. My great-grandma said (no idea if this is accurate, or if she was just making stuff up) that Catholics did blue for girls because they wanted the blessing of the Virgin Mary and wanted them to led a life modeled after the female saint. But that protestant didn't do the saints so they switched things around just to be different. Being associated with birth announcements also makes sence. In Belgium when you go to visit a new baby for the first time you get a little gift or favor and these are color coded. When I was born my family was still doing blue for girls and pink or white for boys, but with the rise for more international media that was switched.
I once read about a mother, circa 1900, whose baby girl was very ill. She said she prayed to the Virgin Mary to heal her child, and when she recovered, out of gratitude, the mother dressed her little girl exclusively in blue and white for seven years.
Nicole: Doing the deep dives so you don't have to. Love the depths of research.
As a linguist, i wanted to add for maximum clarity that having the word pink, the way it is used in English, is more than just having a new term for a prexisting concept. Despite typically having the same relationship to red that light blue has to blue, we tend to see it as a distinct category in its own right, a category on the level of red rather than a variant within it. Even when you have a distinct term for a light blue, light green, light orange, light yellow or light purple in English (lavender comes to mind), they are still typically seen as a variant of the major color category or even a functional synonym. "Pink" instead can entail many shades and tints all included under one umbrella term, often dipping over into purply tones even. And though people are often aware it is essentially light red, id argue this is a learned piece of trivia. If you don't have to think about what pink is or how to mix it with paints, you will tend to see it as its own color, at least in my experience when I've asked people about it. And in this way it's an interesting little anomoly within our color term system.
Also, very often when "pink" is an option in a set of colors, it's a light shade of fuchsia or magenta on the cooler side of reds. If you were printing it with 4-color printing (like a typical color printer) it would use just the magenta ink (with more space between dots to make it lighter). "Red" in the same set is typically a neutral red. It would be printed with magenta and some yellow in 4-color printing.
In my native tongue, pink is called "light red". We also have the word pink, but it's usually meant for brighter or darker pinks, the ones that aren't light. Baby pink is light red and magenta or fuchsia are pink.
I'm also a linguist, and an artist and I work in childcare. Children don't distinguish pink from red initially, just as they don't distinguish orange from red or yellow, depending on the shade. They learn red, blue and green first, and go on from there. Pink comes up more with girls, but around age 3, all the kids will fight over which colour cup or plate they get, and the pink cups especially. I teach in Germany and a lot of small children aren't learning the German word 'rosa', but the English 'pink'.
@@splendidcolors In my experience, the "primary" Pink in a box of crayons or in grade school is not a cool shade of red, just red with white added, and in alt contexts there are usually countless optioms that vary by setting. Though I'm a painter so printer pigment coloring feels counterintuitive an confuses me and i don't think describes the way humans think about color when using generic color terms. Painting is closer, esp with simple mixes. But I'm guessing a typical light blue in paint would be produced with more than just cyan as well. And I will add, this is an anomoly in English and may be in other languages but it isn't universal and I believe there's at least 1 language that uses light blue in a typical way at use pink.
@@sonjaimmonen6610 yeah that's interesting. In my experience, the light red color (taking neutral red and adding white) is the generic pink taught with color terms to children, though cooler tones are also included under the umbrella term.
I love this channel. I find it quite surprising considering I'm a middle aged rural man who sees fashion as a largely superfluous, extraneous, and shallow signaling device. (Granted that's a critical reduction and fashion serves important purposes at the same time) I love the channel because it's a unique lens through which to look at history and human behavior. Changing one's angle of observation allows for insights that were previously glossed over. I'd like to thank you for what you do, your hard work and enthusiasm has made a realm accessible to me that would otherwise remain overlooked. cheers.
@advicepirate8673 - Clothing has taken on more and more significance as the ages roll by. When England's Prince William married Kate Middleton, there was a big flap on Wikipedia when someone added an article about her wedding dress. Many folks thought it was silly and wanted it deleted, including the site's founder.
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However, people came around when it was pointed out how globally influential the dress was and how much it added to the fashion economy of the world. Also significant was the dress' cultural impact and symbolism - the elegant tailoring, the confidence it exuded, that Kate herself had so much input into its design. She was definitely wearing that dress, not th other way around.
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Contrast this with Diana's wedding dress, the one Camilla steered her to, where she was overwhelmed by all that volume and looked like a big pile of melting whipped cream. She had no confidence at all and that dress telegraphed it. I always think of it as Camilla's "revenge dress" because SHE didn't get to marry Charles, yet, anyway.
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Then there's Louis XIV of France and how he used high fashion to keep possible usurpers broke..........
Thank you for exploding the rural = uneducated myth with your comment. I'm suburban myself, but I know a few farmers, and I hate when ppl immediately go to "hayseed."
@@MossyMozartnot to mention sumptuary laws
@MossyMozart thought you might mention Jacqueline Kennedy's wedding dress. Made by a person of color & had to be remade just weeks before the wedding, as there was a fire at the seamstress' shop.
I think the seamstress also had trouble delivering the dress - "Blacks not allowed" at the fancy hotel. I believe she said she either brought in the dress or she would leave with it.
There was praise for the dress, but they were quiet about the seamstress being black !
i remember when my little sister was born we put a wreath with a stork on the door. i wanted to keep the stork because it looked like a toy to me.
Tempted to send this to my MIL, she's so determined that boys can't possibly wear pink or florals
In my country we have a day called Pink shirt day where everyone has to wear a pink shirt if you like it or not.
@@Mr.scooter-le8yo country name?
Would be a cool place to visit.
@@coolman6139 Croatia
My 11 year old son asked me why everyone wears blue and pink clothes on Easter (to church). I did mention light blue being associated with Mary and Jesus but I had no answer for him when it came to navy blue. 🤷🏻♀️
In France, little girls are in light blue and little boys wear navy (usually combined with cream or white). My mother sent her Parisian grandson, age 12 months, a hand-knit light blue pullover and it was a source of confusion and hilarity over in France.
Navy is statistically the most flattering color for skin complexions and is therefore just one of the most popular colors in the world
The blood coming out of christs heart is often painted with pink because its mixed with the water too, there is this really famous painting of Jesus where both pour out of his wound
Brigitte Bardot wore a pink gingham dress for her wedding in 1959.
Same year she wore a gingham skirt in the movie “Voulez-vous danser avec moi?”
She created a craze for using the gingham pattern for clothing, and not just as cheap tablecloths and curtains for the kitchen.
My parents called the pattern "Brigitte Bardot checkered"
I'm pretty sure gingham print had been used in clothing during the early part of the 20th century for casual daily wear. It actually goes back for centuries.
I love that! Gingham is my favorite warm-weather print. I have a variety of gingham shirts for work. I shall now think of them as Brigitte Bardot shirts. :)
@@persephonebasilissa5109 ...irritating.
And now I'm remembering the church-going men of the southeast (In the early 1980's) decked out in all sorts of pastels , including pink, during the spring and summer... until football season where they all switched to orange (in Knoxville, your location may have varied).
Those colours became popular, thanks to "Miami Vice". Don Johnson as 'Sonny Crockett' made them fashionable.
@@andreabartels3176 "real Men" don't wear Pink they wear Salmon
It’s also cultural. When I lived in China anyone could wear any color. I like pink and blue and found more pink in the men’s department
In Russia the explanation sometimes goes this way, back to XVIII century: whenever a male heir was born in the Imperial family, an order of St.Andrew the Apostle was bestowed upon him, with a sky-blue ribbon, as all male members of the ruling family were officers of this order. So, baby's clothes were decorated with blue ribbons. Imperial daughters were dames of the order of St.Catherine, so their ribbon was dark pink. Later, the tradition went down by the social ladder and became quite common among nobility and lower classes (minus order, of course, just ribbons :) ). It was strong enough to live throughout the Soviet times and it still lives now.
BTW, in Russian "pink" is still "rose" ;)
I remember with dismay the move into gender stereotypes in the 1980s. After the promise of 70s moving away from proscribed colours and toys for boys and girls, it was a real step backwards 😢😢
This is wonderful! Top marks for going down this rabbit hole and finding out how this apparently nuts, moral panic, cultural policing color-coded stuff started! 🏆
Thanks for the deep dive! This video is a good answer for people thinking their baby will spontaneously change their genitalia if dressed in the wrong Color.
😂😂😂
My kids were born in 1995 and 2000. I preferred non-gendered baby clothing, but I dressed them in whatever I got as gifts, even if gendered.
I remember one day when my daughter was a month or two old. We were out shopping, and my daughter was dressed in a one-piece outfit that was half blue, half green, with peach trim. I was thoroughly chewed out by an older woman, a complete stranger, for dressing my daughter in ***boy's*** clothing.
I thought of this when my son was born ... one of his favorite clothing items were a pair of pink slippers. I also dressed him in pink onesies that were his older sister's, but only at home or around people whom I knew didn't care.
FYI, now that they are adults, both are very secure in their gender identity, and clearly were not traumatized by wearing the "wrong" color as babies.
I had my daughter in a green shirt that literally said "Daddy's Little Princess," someone refered to her as a boy, and then blamed the color of the shirt. Like, I labeled this kid in plain English, lady. I don't know what the problem is.
Did you also notice a change in what Target stocked between 1995 and 2000? I was so glad that I had kept (and repaired) the older kid's clothes because I couldn't find corduroy overalls in light blue anymore or t-shirts without glitter.
I'm currently pregnant and I am having a boy, but I can assure you that I'd be buying blue and green things covered in dinosaurs whether it was a boy or girl because my favorite color is blue followed by green, as is my husband's and dinosaurs are cool. I saw a teal dinosaur onesie the other day and I was just like, well this is coming home with me. I've also selected other colors and other animals for my future kid, but lordy you'd think it was a law to dress your kids in gendered clothing with the way people act.
I had incredibly difficult pregnancies and preemie babies in 1996 and 1999, all preemie clothes that were available were white and also incredibly expensive. They were easily used for both my son and daughter though.
In 2011 I had another baby and increased medical knowledge/different treatments enabled me to carry to term. White baby clothes were seemingly non existent at the time.
You will nowadays find clothing for preemies in colour, because many mothers were not happy with the clothes they found and decided to change it. There are women out there, who started their own businesses with colourful preemie clothes.
Thank you for this insightful video! We got a lot of hand-me-downs for our baby daughter, a lot of boyish clothes (mostly in the maritime direction) and my mother-in-law was really sad, when she saw that.
On the other hand, I’m baffled, what one sees in shops, how early boys items are plastered with tractors etc. I mean growing enthusiasm for agricultural jobs is generally a good thing, but really… ?
A lot of farms are run by women, too. Even big ones.
Your post reminded me of a set of jackets in my family. My dad and uncle are fraternal twins, born in 1946. They had a pair of white sailor jackets, identical style, red piping trim on one, and blue piping trim on the other, worn when they were about 12 to 18 months old, then their little sister (my aunt) wore the jackets a few years later. From the late 60s through the late 80s, 10 more kids in the family wore the jackets, 5 boys and 5 girls, with no concern about who wore which color; I think we all wore both colors while they fit each of us, some of us in pairs about a year apart (the jackets were a bit big on the younger of the pair). We all looked cute in the sailor jackets!
@@dawnkindnesscountsmost5991 oh, that sounds so cute! And ecofriendly.
I have a daughter, and we went specifically trying to avoid any kind of 'letters' read out as words or brand logos (even cartoon figures). It became progressively harder and harder to avoid all that loonatic nonsense written on babies' and toddlers' clothing. Oddly enough, all these signs are now in English (very rarely French or German), and we live in Hungary.
Also we can see that every store has miniature versions of adults' clothes for little kids, and you can find very extreme clothes especially for girls. I do like the concept of dressing like children and not dressing them up as little adults.
@@Dornwild yes, that’s really difficult!
I have always refused to dress up my girls in pink. Finding clothes for them in the girls' department was so difficult. Finding colourful clothes for my boy was less of a hassle, but still too much. It's ridiculous!
In the Netherlands we have the tradition of serving "muisjes" on rusk when a child is born. Until the early 90s, these were only available in pink, but by the time my son was born, they'd introduced blue ones. Again, I was not willing to conform to silly gender fashions and expectations.
It's to the point that you have to go online to find really colorful clothes for
any age. I love Hanna Andersson, but it's expensive.
My youngest daughter was so stubborn about colours. She wanted pink no matter what by the time she was 2 and a half. Here I was trying to bring her up gender neutral and no way was she going to do that.
@@lenabreijer1311 but couldn't she just enjoy pink as an individual preference, rather than as a girl preference? Wouldn't that still be gender neutral, because the idea is that anyone can like any color. Even if it coincidentally is the same as the artificial society prescription. (I raised my son gender neutral, also. 😊 Everyone should be able to enjoy both trucks and flowers!)
@@VesnaVK yes. It was her preference and I respected that. At 10 she went goth for a while (peer pressure) but by college she was back into pink.
My Goddaughter has boy & girl twins. I try very hard not to be gender specific. I either get them the same thing, the same non gender color, or purple & turquoise , yellow& green etc. Other people give pink & blue & I laugh when the boy wears the pink & the girl the blue. Luckily the parents don't care what they wear except that they wear clothes.
Based
Whoops...autocorrect
I'm Dutch and never before now have I realised that putting up signs or decorations outside the house or in the window to announce a birth is not a thing outside of the Netherlands...
Super interesting video!
Thanks to Nicole for another riveting dive down the rabbit hole (because one cliche simply wasn't enough for me). I had known that pink wasn't always for girls and blue for boys, but I had no idea it was so complicated and controversial! My favorite part: the newspaper advice column that advised that if you are still confused about which color is "correct," write to President Hoover and ask him to have the Bureau of Standards settle the issue. Clearly this is an issue that needs addressing at the presidential level. P.S. Would love a video on the infantilization of women.
I second the P.S. That's a great idea!
Thirded!
I was born in the mid-1980s and am my parents' youngest child. My mum never had an ultrasound related to pregnancy, as we were all low-to-average risk pregnancies and ultrasounds weren't used as a matter of routine unless it was a high risk pregnancy, at least in Finland.
So not only did my parents not know which variety of infant to expect, my mum has said that she was always a little worried that she'd have Surprise! twins (twins run in her family), in case the midwives missed it. My siblings and I were all born individually.
I'm also an 80s baby and my mom didn't have ultrasounds with me or my sibling. My baby blanket was yellow with white trim and my siblings was white, blue, and pink.
Gendering colors is stupid and doubly stupid for babies. The only time a baby's genitals matter is during a diaper change (where it's important to only wipe front-to-back for a girl and to keep a boy's penis covered to avoid a pee fountain.)
My grandma kept having babies early, so she missed her x-rays (1960s medicine, whee!) both times. Her second pregnancy was twins!
'Variety of infant' is a phrase that I'm stealing from you, I love it
I’m an 80’s baby too- my Mom picked colourful balloons (not real ones of course! Prints on blankets and a wall decoration made of felt and such) in bright primary colours for decorating my nursery, with yellow walls. When I asked her many years later why she picked that just out of curiosity, it was basically “They’re colorful, they’re fun, and in case the ultrasound was wrong it was good for both boys and girls!”
I have a photograph of my grandfather as an infant in the 1920s where he's wearing a long white dress. I remember seeing this picture as a child and my head spinning bc I couldn't believe they could put a boy in a dress and expressing this to my mom. Now I'm a queer adult and this memory cracks me up. 😆
I also have such a photo. I was told it was the Christening gown and quite common to have photos taken with the child dressed in it, girl or boy.😊
Have you never been to a christening? Before tailoring was a thing and most people only owned a few pieces of clothing, men and women basically wore the same garments.
My first communion dress was light blue which was unusual - since they were usually white - but my Italian grandmother says she bought in light blue for the Virgin Mary.
Love that so much, and it makes a lot of sense! My daughter loves light blue and I’m sure she’ll want that for first communion too.
Thank you for this highly interesting video, dear Nicole! 🙋🏼♀️🦋🩷 I was born in 62 and my lay-at was all pale yellow with peach embroidery. This way, my parents were on the „safe side“ 😅 My parents‘ lay-ats - respectively from 34 and 37 - were almost wholly white, in my father’s case with navy and black (!) embroidery. An interesting subject for sure 👚👕 Best wishes from Germany, have a splendid week!
A square of lace in a front window or on the door, to tell people to leave the people inside alone, is a tradition I can get behind.
According to my mother's account, I had some say in the colors I wore as an infant--although my parents had also bought things in pale blue, pink, yellow, and white. It's fair to say that I expressed definite preferences. I didn't want white or pastels; I wanted red. To this day red is still one of my favorite colors. I'm due to give birth to my daughter next month, and I've already been advised that white is the most practical when it comes to ease of laundering. Personally I'm inclined to continue the family tradition of allowing her some say re color, and let the chips fall where they may.
We have neon Vanish now.
My 6 year old was OBSESSED with purple as a baby! She would stick her little arm out of her stroller while we walked around the shops and try to steal purple things. One time I had to buy a purple dish cloth because she wouldn't leave the store without it and I couldn't physically pry it from her little hands. Now that she's 6 her favourite colour is pink and her second favourite colour is rainbow, but purple is a close third.
@@forest_green That is just too cute!
Mine would just take things off that she didn't like, like dark colours.
@@lenabreijer1311 I was the same way! If what I think is true, my one will be similarly strong-willed.
(Side note: love the hair, love the blouse and how it coordniates with the colors at 20:57). This is so interesting! Thank you for continuing to share your research.
That blouse is beautiful!
I'm shocked that you never mentioned the famous and popular painting by painter, Thomas Gainsborough "The Blue Boy," 1770. And the follow-up painting by Thomas Gainsborough entitled, "Pinkie." I'm certain they were a huge influence.
Please consider doing a video on the history of sportswear or athletic wear
I think Abby Cox already has a video on that.
If you search for the Figge Art Museums youtube, I have two very long lectures I did on women's sportswear there! I may eventually whittle it down to videos on here as well.
Oh, thank you! I'd suspected this for a while. I'd seen a rise in people stating "it used to be pink for boys and blue for girls you know," and I've been thinking no, I don't know. I've seen a single Sear's catalogue that advertised pink and blue for babies in general. It suggested that boisterous pink might be better for a boy while dainty blue might be better for a girl, but it was shopper's choice as far as what they thought was best. Wasn't Baby Teddy Roosevelt, in his little gold ringlets, all decked out in easy-to-boil white? I'm glad you delved into this, I didn't realize pink and blue for babies went back as far as it did, or that other colors were preferred in different times and places.
Thank you for this fascinating deep dive! I love your videos! Totally bonkers that we have gendered colors - and interesting to explore my own pink aversion and learned misogyny as a woman. This occurred to me as I was listening: I’d be curious to know whether the pink triangles used by nazis to identify gay men had any gender-related connotations, and whether it influenced or reinforced the homophobia associated with men wearing pink.
@commandermagpie - As I was scrolling through the comments, I was wondering the same thing and if I should bring it up. So glad you had the moxie while I am moxie-less!
was also about to comment this as I always grew up thinking the nazi pink triangles were the culprit of pink being looked down on for boys because of the attitudes towards homosexuality. Im sure it must have played some part in the conscious decisions in some cultures!
Very interesting video! Being raised in Poland in then 80' I didn't encounter blue/pink thing until very late.. For practical reasons and general lack of everything 😅 our parents got the cloths in the colours that were avaliable (mostly white, sometimes blue or beige) and easy to wash. I vaguely remember some pink dresses for girls appearing in the 90', but my sister and I never got one because my mum genuinely hates this colour😅. I didn't know blue/pink was such a big thing until I got my own children, when I suddenly found out that buying small baby clothes in colours other than white, blue and pink was nearly impossible! My grandma told me then that in the 50' when she got children, blue was for girls and pink for boys. Btw pink in polish is still rose (róż), and I always wondered where does "pink" come from. Thx for all the research ❤
I was very happy to read some of the Dutch articles you found and the culture being shown. I didn’t know the practice was that old! My family a post with a wooden cut out of a baby in a teal diaper on it on which you could hang the name of the baby. In the early 2000s, gluing an ostrich to your window (making it look as if it flew through) was really common. Nowadays you see more variations of announcers at houses, but most show the name of the baby.
A flying ostrich? Are you sure you've got the right bird?
I’m very happy🎉, that I could help you with your research!❤ the video is fantastic! If you ever have an other dutch question, I’m happy to help!
In Luxembourg pink was for boys and blue for girls right up into the 80’s but I don’t know if it’s still so much of a thing. It’s a Catholic country so perhaps the blue for girls is linked to the Virgin Mary (though why is light blue linked to her anyway??). My understanding of the pink thing for boys is that red is associated with power which in turn is associated with men, pink is a trickle down from that. It’s traditional in Luxembourg to give gifts of sugared almonds to announce the birth of your baby in the gendered colour.
I appreciate all of the effort you do to create these informative videos. In addition, I strongly appreciate you not only giving us the reference for your information but also screenshots so that we can read the reference materials ourselves to come to our own conclusions. Well done. 👏 👏 👏
I love this video! Thank you for putting in real effort and getting to the bottom of things as well as you did
Oh, I LOVE the fact that you do this real research. It is so refreshing to see you being so objective and interest in the history of everything. But I'm a historian, so there's that! I just love your channel, thank you so much for all the work you do.
Your delivery, depth of research and pointed details are why I'm subbing.
I love this! Researched and informative about something that is very topical atm.
I see a floofchild next to you. Love Bailey! You could do a vid just on him, how you got him, personality etc? That would be adorable and fun.
This kind of “meandering knowledge” is what I absolutely adore!! With so much negative news in the world, “meandering knowledge” is so refreshing and educational at the same time!
I baby sat twins one dressed in blue one in pink and was asked if they were both boys or both girls back in the 1950s
I hated pink for years after getting teased for liking it by the boys I grew up with. it wasn't I gave my lab options and let her pick stuff out, and every single time, she picked the pink option. no clue why. I've never had another who seem to have a favorite color, but my Sloopy girl loved pink things, and now I pink makes me think of her, so it's one of my favorite colors now
That's really weird, because dogs are colorblind.
@@kellyburds2991they're not black and white colorblind, it's more muted iirc. but if you gave her a rainbow of identically toys, she'd pick the pink one every time
I really enjoyed this video, thank you for all the hard work! History can be Incredibly fascinating, at times. Your style is entertaining. Love how you articulate so well.
🙏🏻
I just love the realization of how the ways, we often see so set and given, were completely different just some time ago. And just how much fashion reflects the worldview and the other way around too.
In German we also say "rosa", which refers to the english word "rose". The word "pink" is also rather young in German. And to be precise there is a huge difference between "rosa" and "pink". For us Germans, pink is pretty glaring, whereas "rosa" is pretty pale.
Thank you for doing all that research - it really cleared up my understanding of the issue. I love your videos Nicole! From Australia 🇦🇺
I love how deeply you research all the things! This is fantastic. Thank you
Good to know! I'm so glad that you are able to go down these research rabbit hole and make sense of all the info uncovered. I really enjoy learning what you find!
As an aside I had no idea colour fast was a company. I always thought of it as a guarantee that the colour wouldn't bleed in the wash. Though now that I think about it it was mentioned much more in my childhood same with Technicolor! Apparently I'm old
I'm a guy and I look damn fine in pink.
This was such a great, informative video! Thank you for doing this research and including all the visuals.
Woah, I didn't really ever think about the Dutch practice of decorating the door not being common elsewhere. That kinda blew my mind, it is just so normal here. Nowadays, it's usually a sign with the child's name and some decoration like clothes or strings of little flags (at least where I live in the Netherlands).
Also fascinating how in the mid-20th century, boys were super gendered by age 3/4 to ensure they won't question their sexuality. I recently heard about and realised just how much homophobia and toxic masculinity are just about hating women, and thus by association gendered things like the colour pink.
The thing about girls needing to remain young and innocent also gave me the ick. We still do that, also with women needing to do anything and everything to not age, look as young as possible. So much to unpack here😅
I love your research rabbit holes!
Also, I started listening to the Tenfold More Wicked podcast lately and the host, Kate Winkler Dawson (another wonderful researcher and storyteller) has a very similar voice to you (at least to my ears!)
My grandmother told me about pink being for boys when she was young. She was born in 1910. 🇺🇸
Thank you for doing a boatload of research on this topic. It was really fascinating.
my grandfather, born in the Edwardian era, was photographed in a long white gown. A family story tells of him throwing a red garment into the copper laundry boiler where his sisters’ sunday best white gowns were soaking, and they were furious at the resulting pink dresses.
Thank you for this interesting deep dive! I have known for awhile that for most of history babies were dressed the same regardless of gender. I never thought about why that was the case. So practical! Not only for taking care of baby's bodily functions, also because don't know the gender, but baby will need clothing shortly after birth, and making clothes takes time.
In terms of blue and pink for complexion, my sister is blonde and I am brunette, and one grandma would give her blue things and me pink things. When I actually preferred blue, but didn't know how to tell my grandma this.
Great video! I had always wondered about this topic! Anecdotally, the new mothers in my life are finding it increasingly difficult to find clothes that aren't "gendered" despite their best efforts. My sister-in-law lamented recently that she wasn't going to be a "pink mom" while her 1 year old daughter toddled around wearing pink head to toe. Myself, I was a pretty "girly" child but I remember at a very young age declaring that I hated pink(everything had to be purple) and I simply tolerated my pink barbie car and my pink ballet slippers. I don't mind pink as much now, but there's still part of me that hates buying products in pink because of all the "pink is for girls" nonsense that was pushed in my face my whole life. Colours don't have a gender and most kids I know don't actually care what they wear until they're old enough to have a favourite colour.
This is the first time watching your channel, 5 minutes in and I subscribed ❤
I had read that "pink for boys, blue for girls" was the French custom and the English, opposing any French style, decreed the opposite.
My daughter has been picking her own clothes out for a while. She turns 5 in a couple weeks. She prefers pink and dresses but enjoys other colours and clothing styles. I have never pushed her to wear something (other than to literally just be wearing clothes)
Belgian here, didn't know kraamknoppers were a thing but it makes me wonder, is it common and traditional in other countries to put up balloons on a door during a birthday, is it (decorating doors for birthdays) something that has been a part of european practice for awhile or is it something that morphed in america from the dutch tradition of kraamknoppers or other similar practice and got brought back during the americanisation of european practices in the late 20th century
We often tie balloons to our mailboxes (at the entrance to our property/driveway) here in the US for celebrations. But that's more of a "this is where the party is" to help people find the house. I can see it being a mix of the two, however!
Here in the south of Germany the birth of a baby ist often anounced by hanging up a clothsline, visible from the street, with baby clothes and a cutout of a stork with a bundled up baby in its beak.
But I never noticed that they are gendered. They are mostly donated old baby clothes from relatives and friends as they often hang quite a while in wind and weather.
For the 18th or any round birthday (with a 0 at the end), there are often decorations put up that are visible from the street. These can be balloons or a big banner or a wrath with the age in the middle. They normally anounce the age in a circle, or even on a speed limit sign and sometimes also the name of the celbrant.
This was really quite fascinating and makes a lot of sense. Definitely gendered clothing for infants was not so much a thing in the 18th century, as you mention, so I knew the origins had to be recent.
For my part, I'm currently pregnant with a male fetus whom we're trying to avoid overly gendering with our baby purchases, but it's a little disheartening to see what colors are being proposed for baby boys. The blues are often the least obnoxious, tbh, as even for infants, apparently some people think boys should be limited to the ugliest possible neutrals. Fortunately, we're not limited to clothes that are marketed "for boys" but it's going to be trickier as the baby gets older, I'm sure...
I am no parent but I find this a fun idea of just asking when they are old enough what color they would like for things or what they seem to gravitate towards and just go for it. Kids know what they want plenty times, seemingly.
This was so well done. Thanks, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I wish baby clothing just came in a pretty blue, rose, and green plaid. Love your videos, always interesting. I still want a pattern for that Edwardian jacket you copied.
Colors & patterens becoming so heavily gendered in contemporary society is such a rabbit hole of conflicting information. Softer, lighter colors in general being associated with babies kind of makes sense to me since they are babies. But blue & red have had such different associations throughout history it makes sense that there would conflicting ideas about blue & pink. I had always been told that masculinity became associated with certin colors due to military uniforms & later work attire. An interesting hypothesis that at first seems very plausible. The psychology of color is so interesting.
This is fascinating! Kassian St. Clair's The Secret Lives of Color mentions the P-B reversal idea, but was vague about the source. Makes sense that the history is much more complex and faceted. Also, love your hair!
Thank you for making this video! You saved me some breath (this is usually my lecture)
Thank you for devoting so much time and effort to researching this obscure topic in the history of society.
Fascinating deep dive. Makes so much sense. Thanks!
You didn't mention the controvertial painting Little Boy Blue...
I haven't even watched this yet. but I have been fascinated by this since I first learned about it as a teenager! Thank you! - Edited after watching - This is great!! Would love to hear your take on infantilizing of women concept!
Fascinating video. Cracked up with the dinosaur bones at the end of the rabbit hole. Which made me think of a rabbit with big pointy teeth.🤣
Made me think back to my days in viking re-enactment and the amount of men on the battlefield in varying shade of pink. Also the female archer (dressed in green or blue) with rather "painful" lessons if an opposing fighter had a hole in their shield (especially the males)😆
I love love love how deep your researches go
Very interesting. Great research work as always. Thank you