computer pink (#ffc0cb)
The colour pink (1733- ) is a colour between red and white, the colour of coral or salmon. Or so said the Oxford dictionary in 2011. There is no pink in the rainbow, in the “Iliad” or the “Odyssey”, in the King James Bible. Shakespeare used the word pink – “the very pink of courtesy” says Mercutio in “Romeo & Juliet” – but never as a colour.
Note: This post mainly applies to the English-speaking world, especially the US.
By the 1570s “pink” was the name of a flower, Dianthus plumarius:
By the 1680s “pink-coloured” was an adjective, meaning the same colour as the flower.
By 1733 “pink” was the name of a colour. This was well after the late 1600s when Anglos started seeing the world in terms of skin colour, which is part of why they call themselves White and not Pink.
In 1834 “pink skin” first shows up in print.
In 1908 “pink is for girls” first appears. But back then in the US it was not yet the self-evident truth that it later became.
In 1918 pink was still mainly for boys. Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department, a trade publication, observed:
“The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. 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.”
Early Disney heroines wore blue: Snow White, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Wendy in Neverland, and Sleeping Beauty.
In the 1940s the tide began to turn and was given a huge push in the 1950s when Eisenhower became the US president: his wife Mamie (pictured above) liked to wear pink because she thought it looked good with her blue eyes.
But in the 1970s feminism pushed back. There are Sears catalogues from that period where there are no pink clothes for little girls. Hard to believe now – because:
In the 1980s came the deluge. With sonograms doctors could determine a child’s sex before birth. Which meant that all the baby stuff could now be gendered (and therefore sold in greater numbers). Pink spread from sleepers and crib sheets to strollers, car seats and riding toys. By 1990 toy makers were heavily marketing things pink to little girls.
Barbie pink (#e0218a)
It was a snowball effect driven in part by how children understand gender:
Between the ages of 3 and 6 most children know what gender they are but do not think it is permanent. They think that what makes them a boy or a girl is how they look and what they like. As if having long hair or liking Barbie dolls makes one a girl. They pick up on society’s gender stereotypes and turn them into a kind of cult. This is when many girls go through a princess or ballerina phase, when cooties become a health concern.
And so “pink is for girls”, a piece of fashion from the 1950s, was turned into an act of gender expression that now seems almost inborn.
– Abagond, 2018, 2019.
Update (2019): Added a sample of Barbie pink.
Sources: Etymology Online (2018); Vox (2015); Smithsonian (2011); “Cinderella Ate My Daughter” (2011) by Peggy Orenstein.
See also:
- watermelon and fried chicken
- Barbie
- Disney Princesses
- Of mermaids, boys, and trans girls
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Abagond 
I detest that colour!
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This is an interesting post
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It’s strange to me you would do a post on this because the word that is this color always ends up in moderation purgatory.
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Right there with Herneith.
It sucks to hate a color and yet invariably receive presents in that color because you’re a girl. And then you have to be “ladylike” and act grateful and say “oh how pretty” instead of “you know my favorite color and I said 200 times if you are going to make me an afghan or a quilt, that is the color I would want but if not that then please please please not pink, so wtf???”
I’ve always hated orange, too, but I didn’t end up with an orange quilt and orange dresses and orange hair bows and orange toys because orange isn’t gendered.
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And let me tell you, once grandma makes a pink quilt for your bed, your aunt is going to crochet you a pink afghan to match, and your mom is going to buy you pink sheets to match, and a family friend is going to run up a pair of pink curtains to match, and your dad will find the most hideous cheap plastic pink lamp, and you will find yourself surrounded by pink pink pink.
I don’t think boys quite get it, because they don’t usually have blue forced on them to the same degree, where they end up choking on it.
Plus blue doesn’t equate with masculinity as strongly as pink with femininity. Both colors are gendered, but pink far more so and with very deep connotations.
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I have always loved this color it makes me happy along with lavender.
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@abagond
“Between the ages of 3 and 6 most children know what gender they are but do not think it is permanent.”
This made be laugh because I was reading about the clown fish yesterday and learned how it changes gender serially. They are born male and turn female in adulthood. If the alpha female of a colony dies one of the males becomes female and takes her place. Imagine if people were like that! LOL
It’s interesting how hung up many humans are about gender while nature does WTF it wants. Sure, the masculine and feminine principles are themes throughout nature but they manifest in individuals and species in a staggering number of ways. I especially shake my head when people invoke nature to support their opposition to humans who do not fit neatly into society’s gender distinctions.
In fact, nature tells the exact opposite story. Heck, human genitals are analogous and they develop from common embryonic tissue. It should be no surprise that the penis and clittoris come from the same progenitors as do the ovaries/testies and labia/scrotum. The just take different turns at Albaquerque [quoth Bugs Bunny] in response to hormones during development but it’s the same general body plan [including nipples for men]. There are obviously real differences but with an underlying common ground. Nature is often like that: sugar and vinegar have the same basic elements.
A fair number of gender differences (clothing, hairstyle, cologne/perfume, representative color) are actually mandated by society rather than biological. The difficulty comprehending any ambiguity and the need to have clear separations and dichotomies is a feature of certain societies and their cultural products not nature.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/dichotomous-thinking/
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@ Origin:
That’s a fascinating fact about the clownfish.
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@Mary
Yeah, I thought so too.
It’s crazy how you could spend several lifetimes learning about what’s right here on Earth and barely scratch the surface.
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Since clownfish change gender, can we say that Finding Nemo was Disney’s first trangender movie? 😉
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It isn’t just clownfish, either. There are about 500 different types of fish who are known to change their gender during their lifetime, either male to female or female to male.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism
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Chickens also sometimes change gender, but it isn’t part of their typical life cycle and it’s still unclear whether they are fertile after they switch:
http://www.urbanchickenpodcast.com/ucp-episode-018/
(There is text about it at this link, not just a podcast.)
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@ Origin
Re: clownfish
That sort of thing even takes place among humans. In Las Salinas in the Dominican Republic, for example, there are girls who turn into boys, or at least that is the way it seems. They are called guevedoce – “penis at 12”. Their genitals appear to be female at birth because of an enzyme deficiency. But once testosterone kicks into high gear at puberty, their genitals turn into penises!
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@Abagond: My mind is blown I have to do some research on this.
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Update: Added a sample of Barbie pink.
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