Why pink for girls

As Peggy Orenstein pointed out in Cinderella Ate My Daughter , the more different clothes and toys are marketed to different babies, the more companies can sell. But no one has been able to prove it. And this isn't just about girls. Van Buren makes a good point: If true feminism means the right to choose, her daughter should be able to like whatever color she wants. But real choice, real self-determination, means the freedom to sort through options without a societal finger on one side of the scale.

For can't-miss news, expert beauty advice, genius home solutions, delicious recipes, and lots more, sign up for the Good Housekeeping newsletter. Subscribe Now. Product Reviews. Home Ideas. United States. Type keyword s to search. Today's Top Stories. In fact, it was once the opposite. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.

And even before that, new parents outfitted their gender-neutral nurseries in pink and blue, similar to the way we use green and yellow today. To some extent, the shift happened after WWII. Five vibration modes and five intensity levels. I won't do so now. I'll just say, I hate, hate, hate this, and I think I'll put my children in green.

The A. About Jezebel Store. By Margaret Hartmann. Because the pink-for-a-girl, blue-for-a-boy social norms only set in during the 20th century in the United States, they cannot possibly stem from any evolved differences between boys' and girls' favorite colors , Paoletti has argued. Baby books, new baby announcements and cards, gift lists and newspaper articles from the early s indicate that pink was just as likely to be associated with boy babies as with girl babies. For example, the June issue of the Infant's Department, a trade magazine for baby clothes manufacturers, said: "There has been a great diversity of opinion on this subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl.

The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy; while blue, which is more delicate and dainty is prettier for the girl. But this attempt at establishing the rule for retailers and manufacturers clearly did not stick.

And it was all over the map," Paoletti said. It wasn't until after the Second World War that the modern convention pink for girls , blue for boys started to dominate, and even so, it didn't "gel" until the s, she said. As for why today's strict color-gender norms set in at all, Philip Cohen, a sociologist also at the University of Maryland, thinks they are, essentially, the outcome of a marketing ploy.