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.
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 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?!
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.
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, 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
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!
@@amandaflatley1216 In retrospect, I've realized that the guys who refused pink clothing probably did so because they were afraid of being ridiculed by others and probably getting beat up. It can be rough if they run with the wrong people. However, most in the homeless community we serve are actually very grateful for clothing and all the other things we do. They support each other and even volunteer to help with our church/neighborhood outreach efforts such as meals and groundskeeping. So many are just decent people going through hard times. As with any group of people, it would be inaccurate to judge all homeless people by the bad actions of a few.
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.
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.
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. 🤷
"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.
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.
If men wear anything pastel, even a pastel blue sometimes, it tends to get them the side-eye of they are over the age of like four. I think it's also this idea 'darks' are manly somehow so blue being the 'darker' of the pastels made it the more acceptable choice of pastel children's clothing somehow *shrug*. Also pink is a no-no but a firm dark red is okay even tho they are cousins on the color wheel. 😂😂
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.
As a male, my favorite color combo for clothing is pink and black. Yet I have nothing in this combo, as it's so difficult to find reasonably priced clothing I can wear in this combo. I have recently picked up a sewing machine to augment my leathercraft habit... hobby, and hopefully, I'll be able to rectify this deficit.
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
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..
I feel you guys are in disadvantage in modern times. Women can wear ”manly colours” and ”manly clothes” and no one bats and eye. But if a man wear ”girly colours” or even ”girly clothes” (dress, skirt), you’re gonna be a local attraction and probably get laughed at etc. I’ve seen some men wearing light pink collar shirt and it looked awesome on them!
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.
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. >_
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.
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:
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!!”
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.
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.
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. -------------- 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. -------------- 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. -------------- 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."
@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 !
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.
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. :)
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).
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.
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!)
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.
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.
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! 🏆
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.
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… ?
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!
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.
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'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!
It is actually also a thing in germany. Not everyone does it but I sometimes walk by houses that have some kind of cartoon stork and baby cutout anouncing the name and birthdate, sometimes even the weight.
It's common here in England, balloons and "It's a boy/girl" banner across the front of the house etc. but I think it's more to make the house pretty and visible for visiting guests to easily find, moreso than to announce to the neighbours or anything though.
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.
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.
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
@@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'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.
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.)
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. 😆
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 dad has multiple shirts that are pink or lavender. He is a lawyer so he has a bunch of ties that go along with them. I think he looks nice in those colors.
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.
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!
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.
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.
My son’s favorite color has been pink since he was a toddler (he’s a teenager now). When he was little, I’d buy him t-shirts out of the girls department because it was the only way to find him pink and purple shirts for school. The only difference in the cut of the shirt was that the sleeves were shorter on the girls shirts, but it was hardly noticeable. I also used to get him girls/women’s shoes. The boys shoe section was always a boring sea of brown, black, and navy, with only a tiny accent of red or lime green here or there. But the girls section was a wonderland of pink, purple, blue, teal, glitter, sparkles, stars, rainbows, and tie dye. He always wanted his everyday shoes to be from the girls section because that was the only way to get colorful shoes. He’s bummed now because he’s grown enough that he’s outgrown the women’s sizes, so his options for colorful shoes are a lot more limited. I don’t know why it’s been decided that boys and men shouldn’t wear color. If you like muted colors, wear that. But I wish there were more options for bright colors too.
I'm glad I watched this! It was very educational. A young girl who had taken up knitting at my church was asking what gender my baby was so she can knit a blue blanket if it was a boy & a pink one if it was a girl. I told her it didn't have to be pink or blue, the blanket could be green. She said, "Green? That's a boy color." I told her green isn't actually associated with a gender and she found that so strange. Maybe She'll find this video as informative as I did.
One thing that's missing, and nobody seems to talk about, is the fact that babies were being brought out into public more often in the 20th century so having gender-specific colors was a way of showing people what gender the baby was without having to tell them directly.
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.
I remember when I was a kid and I found out that “pink is for girls and blue is for boys“ it made me very confused and upset because my favorite color is blue and I’m a girl and if I wore it nobody cared but boys couldn’t wear pink OR purple without getting made fun of. Of course my logic then as to why this was ridiculous was because God made pink and purple and he’s a boy so boys can wear whatever color God made.
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.
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😅
7:49 interesting, and I can see how this leads to pink with having the white lace obscure the red fabric, it would from afar look kinda pinkish I guess
At 6:39 both texts mentionsthat the material under the lace is "roozenroode zijde", which would translate as "rose red silk". As our word for pink is still "roze" (rose), it may well be that it was pink(ish) in some cases. Today, rozerood is a dark pink or red with a pink undertone, but I have no idea if that has stayed the same over the years. When the parents were in mourning, a black cloth was used (but not with a stillbirth). It also says that poor people used white linnen wrapped around their door knocker as a substitute for the lace and silk board.
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...
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)
It's not just the colours of babies and children's clothes that are so strictly defined (at least in the UK), but the quality of the clothes. My daughter buys boys t-shirts and joggers for my granddaughter, not only because they have more colour and print choices but the fabrics are thicker and last longer.
I often think of pink and blue baby clothes as bringing fast fashion to newborns. It ensures that we buy different cloths for each child. When my oldest kids were born, it was easy to find unisex baby clothes. Most were yellow, mint or white. Could be used for the next kid. By the time my youngest was born, it was either pink or blue. In Scandinavian countries unisex baby clothes are popular and in a wide range of colors. Allows for easy preparation for birth, easy to find secondhand and can be used for future children
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.
Tbh the color-gender identity connection is completely ridiculous to me. To begin with, I'd like to make the distinction between sex and gender; sex is biological while gender is the social construct around the qualities expected from people of both sexes. Being a social construct, gender is actually a spectrum as we now know, and it's not a binary matter like sex is, whereas with sex there are "two possible options", either male (XY) or female (XX), (even if there are chromosomic variations such as Klinefelter's syndrome where people have XXY sexual chromosomes). I grew up wearing "boy" colors and I'm a blatant homosexual nonetheless. Now that I get to make my own decisions, I do enjoy adding some pink and fun colors in my wardrobe, but pink has always been my favorite color. On the other hand, my sister also grew up wearing "girly" colors and she absolutely loathes pink.
(autistic interjection moment sorry) sex is actually a spectrum as well. sex chromosomes are not the only determining factor of one's sex characteristics-intersex conditions show that sensitivity (or lack thereof) to certain hormones can totally shape the development of a body. i suggest you look more into sex because it's a really fascinating topic!!
@@darkmoonhotel Thank you for that! Definitely will look more into it :) But as I said, that's where Klinefelter's enters into play, which as you said, is related to hormone sensitivity in the fetus!
@@NicoleRudolph Yeah, the 90s definitely picked up a bit on the primary and secondary colors trends, at least in my part of the world. Love it! I do have baby pics with several primary colors jumpsuits and patterns. Wish adult clothing were half as fun!
@shutup-gc2yk - I am with your sister on that baby pink because of being forced to wear so much of it was a child coupled with my tiny budding feminism (I wanted a drum set, but NO, "only boys played drums!"). I can wear deep magenta pink and salmon colors, but not that insipid frosty pink or bubblegum stuff. My best to you both.
When I was a kid (I was born in 1995) my mum was very practical. I wore mainly hand me down clothes from my cousins, so all she cared was if I'm comfortable, not what colour they were. Was it denim jumpsuit or pink dress, if it was comfy and didn't restrict my movement I wore it. But when she bought me clothes she always had in mind that someone else's child will wear it, and all the younger kids that we knew were boys. It would really get looks if they wore anything pink back then (small town in central/eastern Europe) so she bought me very gender neutral stuff until I hit puberty and there was no way with the sizing (if it somehow happened that she bought something). If I wanted something girly I had to go to my dad, he had no practicality in mind 😂 But tbh I never cared too much about colours, I always wore what I liked at that moment. If I would ever have a child, they're choosing what they want, I don't care. As long as it's weather appropriate and they're comfortable it's all that matters.
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.
In Belgium we do it a LOT as well. Either a stork with a blue or pink baggy in its beak, or the name of the newborn in big letters on the window etc. Lots of options these days
Great video! Thanks for sharing. I am german and we had pink for girls and blue for boys and yellow for both (I am born 1967) I am married to a man born in Belgium ;1961) there then the blue was for girls and pink for boys. My mother in law dressed him in this way and the announcement cards have been pink… I was really wondering when I found the card in an old box asking my mother in law about why she was choosing the colors this way. She said this was it in Belgium at that time - for her a normal thing. Red was seen as a color for strong and powerful men - therefore a preferred color for kings . and the rose color was seen as the little red. … for baby boys to refer to the man he should become..
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)😆
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
As a women, I feel bad for men. Women get to wear dresses, skirts, heels, all different types of tops and crops, and hand bags, and men just have to always have a shirt and jeans. I've always just had this love for feminine like men
Slight correction! The blue commonly associated with the Virgin Mary was a saturated rich ultramarine blue that came from lapis, was only reserved to paint the Virgin Mary because it was very hard to make and obtain. Painters up until I believe the 1700s started using the ultramarine blue in other paintings but yeah a little bit of art history hahaha
Love that the French were blamed for pink/blue clothes in earlier centuries, because in the latter part of the 20th, it was a lot less common to see pink and blue for babies than in the UK or US.. I grew up in the 80s and most babies and young children were wearing primary colours or whatever was practical. It's only in the last 20 ish years or so that they've imitated the English-speaking world and massively gendered baby and children's clothes. I remember being very shocked by how separate kid's clothes were when I moved to the UK in 2001. That said, pink was definitely associated for girls in France too, and I hated it for that reason. We just had more choice than now, thankfully.
A non-newspaper reference would be Rose Wilder or her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. Rose wrote about a neighbor having a baby and how there was a discussion about how blue was for girls and pink was for boys. This would date back to Rose's childhood years.
Thank you so much for doing this research! I have heard the different stories and it's nice to finally have someone finally sort it out. I'm 73. I have a treasured picture of my Dad in a portrait studio picture sitting in a charming white dress when he must have been about one and a half or thereabouts. His one year older brother is standing next to him wearing an adorable sailor suit.
In slavic societies basically all traditional clothing was red , white and black . In Bulgaria where I come from we have these boy and girl characters for certain festivals called Pizhо аnd Penda and the girl has red as her colour and the boy white . I don't know about clothes for little kids but it's certainly interesting to see what colours are considered feminine in different cultures .
I know when I was a teenager no boy would wear pink. I also remember my mother telling me a little adage. Something like mommy had a boy , daddy’s in the pink ! Mommy had a boy and daddy is feeling blue. She was born in the early 20 s. It’s probably something her mother said to her. But this was quite interesting. And I love pink on men or boys. Some people look great in it ❤
Absolutely riveting! As for the origins I wonder if it might not have been the Spanish won’t bother you but rather this household is exempt from conscription to resist an invading force
Thankfully I was born in early 80s and so most of my baby and child clothes were blue, mustard, liberty florals, greens... whatever struck my mum and dad's fancy. That being said I mostly tried to avoid pink growing up - not because I dislike the colour - but I disliked the girly associations. Really frustrated me, especially as I did not want to be infantilised. That and most pink shades don't really suit me. Salmons not being common children's wear. 😂
I think that dressing the genders in different colours was also done to avoid the awkward, “What did you have?” situation. Much easier to glance at the clothing colour and congratulate the mother on her lovely baby boy/girl. That was certainly the situation for my mother, her neighbours and friends when I was growing up in the U.K. in the 60s.
I love the whole period of "I've been told it's very specifically one way or the other but I don't know which is which"! Fashions are so painfully, delightfully absurd!
Made-up nonsense indeed! I couldn't have put it better myself. I find gender stereotyping in all its forms deeply disturbing. As a grandparent I found it impossible to buy gender neutral pyjamas to keep in the house in case of "little accidents" on the part of my grandsons or granddaughters when they were toddlers. The pyjamas were either khaki with dinosaurs, cars or superheros all over them, or pink and covered in flowers, butterflies or unicorns - and the kids refused to wear the "wrong" ones! 😮 Already indoctrinated by age 3! Made my blood boil.
Thanks for your excellent episode! Color, as with so many things, shouldn't be an issue. As a child of the 50's, I was disappointed when I first was taken as a teen to get clothes for school and the dull, limited colors in the men's and young boy's section. It has never made sense to me, especially gravitating toward the arts and using color. Hopefully the day will come when children and adults and wear and enjoy whichever colors they choose. There are real problems in the world and the color a person is wearing shouldn't be one of them.
Alice and Dorothy both wore blue, so it obviously wasn't required that girls wear pink. Sure, they were fictional, but if blue were never worn by girls, why would the authors have dressed them thus?
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.
I chose to not know the gender throughout my pregnancy and told everyone who wanted to contribute to keep things neutral. We got a lot of beige, white, pastel blues, greens and yellows. Best choice for our family! When we moved through items, it was easy to donate or resell them at a consignment shop. This was an interesting video!!
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 🤷♀️
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.
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
Now THIS is the kind of random information I come to UA-cam for!
Simp.
@@dmacrolensGrump. 😂
"random"
right! I love learning new things!
Same!
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!
Hopefully you stopped supporting the homeless and that situation showed you how ungrateful they are.
@@amandaflatley1216 In retrospect, I've realized that the guys who refused pink clothing probably did so because they were afraid of being ridiculed by others and probably getting beat up. It can be rough if they run with the wrong people. However, most in the homeless community we serve are actually very grateful for clothing and all the other things we do. They support each other and even volunteer to help with our church/neighborhood outreach efforts such as meals and groundskeeping. So many are just decent people going through hard times. As with any group of people, it would be inaccurate to judge all homeless people by the bad actions of a few.
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....🙄🙄
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.
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. 🤷
"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.
If men wear anything pastel, even a pastel blue sometimes, it tends to get them the side-eye of they are over the age of like four. I think it's also this idea 'darks' are manly somehow so blue being the 'darker' of the pastels made it the more acceptable choice of pastel children's clothing somehow *shrug*. Also pink is a no-no but a firm dark red is okay even tho they are cousins on the color wheel. 😂😂
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.
As a male, my favorite color combo for clothing is pink and black. Yet I have nothing in this combo, as it's so difficult to find reasonably priced clothing I can wear in this combo. I have recently picked up a sewing machine to augment my leathercraft habit... hobby, and hopefully, I'll be able to rectify this deficit.
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
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
Pink guy gang
I feel you guys are in disadvantage in modern times. Women can wear ”manly colours” and ”manly clothes” and no one bats and eye. But if a man wear ”girly colours” or even ”girly clothes” (dress, skirt), you’re gonna be a local attraction and probably get laughed at etc. I’ve seen some men wearing light pink collar shirt and it looked awesome on them!
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.
Unreasonably amused by "guessing at what the appearance of the small visitor will be."
I found it cute!🥰
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.
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.
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
Totally happened, for sure
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.
My communion dress was also light blue for virgin mary! It really stood out from the white of others (also it was less poofy and croched by my mother)
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 !
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. :)
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
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.
Nicole: Doing the deep dives so you don't have to. Love the depths of research.
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.
😂😂😂
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.
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! 🏆
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
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!
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'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!
It is actually also a thing in germany. Not everyone does it but I sometimes walk by houses that have some kind of cartoon stork and baby cutout anouncing the name and birthdate, sometimes even the weight.
It's common here in England, balloons and "It's a boy/girl" banner across the front of the house etc. but I think it's more to make the house pretty and visible for visiting guests to easily find, moreso than to announce to the neighbours or anything though.
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.
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.
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'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.
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 dad has multiple shirts that are pink or lavender. He is a lawyer so he has a bunch of ties that go along with them. I think he looks nice in those colors.
I'm a guy and I look damn fine in pink.
It is strange to me that pink is perceived as a distinct colour from red, but pastel shades of blue, yellow, etc. are not as big a deal.
There are some countries that do have distinct color names for the lighter shades. For example, Russia has a separate name for light blue.
@@ksbrook1430 Language is weird.
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.
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!
Your delivery, depth of research and pointed details are why I'm subbing.
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.
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.
My son’s favorite color has been pink since he was a toddler (he’s a teenager now).
When he was little, I’d buy him t-shirts out of the girls department because it was the only way to find him pink and purple shirts for school. The only difference in the cut of the shirt was that the sleeves were shorter on the girls shirts, but it was hardly noticeable.
I also used to get him girls/women’s shoes.
The boys shoe section was always a boring sea of brown, black, and navy, with only a tiny accent of red or lime green here or there.
But the girls section was a wonderland of pink, purple, blue, teal, glitter, sparkles, stars, rainbows, and tie dye.
He always wanted his everyday shoes to be from the girls section because that was the only way to get colorful shoes.
He’s bummed now because he’s grown enough that he’s outgrown the women’s sizes, so his options for colorful shoes are a lot more limited.
I don’t know why it’s been decided that boys and men shouldn’t wear color.
If you like muted colors, wear that. But I wish there were more options for bright colors too.
I'm glad I watched this! It was very educational. A young girl who had taken up knitting at my church was asking what gender my baby was so she can knit a blue blanket if it was a boy & a pink one if it was a girl. I told her it didn't have to be pink or blue, the blanket could be green. She said, "Green? That's a boy color." I told her green isn't actually associated with a gender and she found that so strange. Maybe She'll find this video as informative as I did.
One thing that's missing, and nobody seems to talk about, is the fact that babies were being brought out into public more often in the 20th century so having gender-specific colors was a way of showing people what gender the baby was without having to tell them directly.
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
16:44 the kid on the left looks so pleased with himself! One of the best baby pictures I've ever seen!
I had read that "pink for boys, blue for girls" was the French custom and the English, opposing any French style, decreed the opposite.
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.
I remember when I was a kid and I found out that “pink is for girls and blue is for boys“ it made me very confused and upset because my favorite color is blue and I’m a girl and if I wore it nobody cared but boys couldn’t wear pink OR purple without getting made fun of. Of course my logic then as to why this was ridiculous was because God made pink and purple and he’s a boy so boys can wear whatever color God made.
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.
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😅
7:49 interesting, and I can see how this leads to pink with having the white lace obscure the red fabric, it would from afar look kinda pinkish I guess
At 6:39 both texts mentionsthat the material under the lace is "roozenroode zijde", which would translate as "rose red silk". As our word for pink is still "roze" (rose), it may well be that it was pink(ish) in some cases. Today, rozerood is a dark pink or red with a pink undertone, but I have no idea if that has stayed the same over the years.
When the parents were in mourning, a black cloth was used (but not with a stillbirth).
It also says that poor people used white linnen wrapped around their door knocker as a substitute for the lace and silk board.
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...
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)
It's not just the colours of babies and children's clothes that are so strictly defined (at least in the UK), but the quality of the clothes. My daughter buys boys t-shirts and joggers for my granddaughter, not only because they have more colour and print choices but the fabrics are thicker and last longer.
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!
My grandmother told me about pink being for boys when she was young. She was born in 1910. 🇺🇸
I often think of pink and blue baby clothes as bringing fast fashion to newborns. It ensures that we buy different cloths for each child. When my oldest kids were born, it was easy to find unisex baby clothes. Most were yellow, mint or white. Could be used for the next kid. By the time my youngest was born, it was either pink or blue. In Scandinavian countries unisex baby clothes are popular and in a wide range of colors. Allows for easy preparation for birth, easy to find secondhand and can be used for future children
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.
Tbh the color-gender identity connection is completely ridiculous to me.
To begin with, I'd like to make the distinction between sex and gender; sex is biological while gender is the social construct around the qualities expected from people of both sexes. Being a social construct, gender is actually a spectrum as we now know, and it's not a binary matter like sex is, whereas with sex there are "two possible options", either male (XY) or female (XX), (even if there are chromosomic variations such as Klinefelter's syndrome where people have XXY sexual chromosomes).
I grew up wearing "boy" colors and I'm a blatant homosexual nonetheless. Now that I get to make my own decisions, I do enjoy adding some pink and fun colors in my wardrobe, but pink has always been my favorite color. On the other hand, my sister also grew up wearing "girly" colors and she absolutely loathes pink.
I always hated pink growing up because of the stereotypes I associated with it. Thank goodness in the 1990s, aqua was more than readily available!
(autistic interjection moment sorry) sex is actually a spectrum as well. sex chromosomes are not the only determining factor of one's sex characteristics-intersex conditions show that sensitivity (or lack thereof) to certain hormones can totally shape the development of a body. i suggest you look more into sex because it's a really fascinating topic!!
@@darkmoonhotel Thank you for that! Definitely will look more into it :) But as I said, that's where Klinefelter's enters into play, which as you said, is related to hormone sensitivity in the fetus!
@@NicoleRudolph Yeah, the 90s definitely picked up a bit on the primary and secondary colors trends, at least in my part of the world. Love it! I do have baby pics with several primary colors jumpsuits and patterns. Wish adult clothing were half as fun!
@shutup-gc2yk - I am with your sister on that baby pink because of being forced to wear so much of it was a child coupled with my tiny budding feminism (I wanted a drum set, but NO, "only boys played drums!"). I can wear deep magenta pink and salmon colors, but not that insipid frosty pink or bubblegum stuff. My best to you both.
When I was a kid (I was born in 1995) my mum was very practical. I wore mainly hand me down clothes from my cousins, so all she cared was if I'm comfortable, not what colour they were. Was it denim jumpsuit or pink dress, if it was comfy and didn't restrict my movement I wore it. But when she bought me clothes she always had in mind that someone else's child will wear it, and all the younger kids that we knew were boys. It would really get looks if they wore anything pink back then (small town in central/eastern Europe) so she bought me very gender neutral stuff until I hit puberty and there was no way with the sizing (if it somehow happened that she bought something). If I wanted something girly I had to go to my dad, he had no practicality in mind 😂 But tbh I never cared too much about colours, I always wore what I liked at that moment. If I would ever have a child, they're choosing what they want, I don't care. As long as it's weather appropriate and they're comfortable it's all that matters.
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.
In Belgium we do it a LOT as well. Either a stork with a blue or pink baggy in its beak, or the name of the newborn in big letters on the window etc. Lots of options these days
You didn't mention the controvertial painting Little Boy Blue...
Great video! Thanks for sharing. I am german and we had pink for girls and blue for boys and yellow for both (I am born 1967) I am married to a man born in Belgium ;1961) there then the blue was for girls and pink for boys. My mother in law dressed him in this way and the announcement cards have been pink… I was really wondering when I found the card in an old box asking my mother in law about why she was choosing the colors this way. She said this was it in Belgium at that time - for her a normal thing. Red was seen as a color for strong and powerful men - therefore a preferred color for kings . and the rose color was seen as the little red. … for baby boys to refer to the man he should become..
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)😆
This content is brilliant, deserves algorithm boost
I dress my little boy in all different shades of pink. And he looks like a handsome man.🩷💪🏻
Like so many things, the idea of gendered colors was driven by marketing.
my two brothers and me (also male). were mostly dressed in pink and light purple in the 90ies. because our parents let us choose and we just liked it
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 love love love how deep your researches go
As a women, I feel bad for men. Women get to wear dresses, skirts, heels, all different types of tops and crops, and hand bags, and men just have to always have a shirt and jeans. I've always just had this love for feminine like men
It's almost as if frequencies of light don't actually have a gender 🤷🏽♀️
Thanks for this. Great video.
Slight correction! The blue commonly associated with the Virgin Mary was a saturated rich ultramarine blue that came from lapis, was only reserved to paint the Virgin Mary because it was very hard to make and obtain. Painters up until I believe the 1700s started using the ultramarine blue in other paintings but yeah a little bit of art history hahaha
Love that the French were blamed for pink/blue clothes in earlier centuries, because in the latter part of the 20th, it was a lot less common to see pink and blue for babies than in the UK or US.. I grew up in the 80s and most babies and young children were wearing primary colours or whatever was practical. It's only in the last 20 ish years or so that they've imitated the English-speaking world and massively gendered baby and children's clothes. I remember being very shocked by how separate kid's clothes were when I moved to the UK in 2001. That said, pink was definitely associated for girls in France too, and I hated it for that reason. We just had more choice than now, thankfully.
A non-newspaper reference would be Rose Wilder or her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. Rose wrote about a neighbor having a baby and how there was a discussion about how blue was for girls and pink was for boys. This would date back to Rose's childhood years.
Thank you so much for doing this research! I have heard the different stories and it's nice to finally have someone finally sort it out. I'm 73. I have a treasured picture of my Dad in a portrait studio picture sitting in a charming white dress when he must have been about one and a half or thereabouts. His one year older brother is standing next to him wearing an adorable sailor suit.
In slavic societies basically all traditional clothing was red , white and black . In Bulgaria where I come from we have these boy and girl characters for certain festivals called Pizhо аnd Penda and the girl has red as her colour and the boy white . I don't know about clothes for little kids but it's certainly interesting to see what colours are considered feminine in different cultures .
I know when I was a teenager no boy would wear pink. I also remember my mother telling me a little adage. Something like mommy had a boy , daddy’s in the pink ! Mommy had a boy and daddy is feeling blue. She was born in the early 20 s. It’s probably something her mother said to her. But this was quite interesting. And I love pink on men or boys. Some people look great in it ❤
Yeah, my husband looks much better than I do in pale blue and pink.
- Did you perhaps mean --- "Mommy had a girl and daddy is feeling blue."? My mother told me that my father was upset when she had a girl.
What an entertaining and well researched video! Also, the pattern on your top is GORGEOUS.
The etymology of Pinking Shears vexed me until twenty seconds ago. Thank you.
Sub secured.
Absolutely riveting!
As for the origins I wonder if it might not have been the Spanish won’t bother you but rather this household is exempt from conscription to resist an invading force
Thankfully I was born in early 80s and so most of my baby and child clothes were blue, mustard, liberty florals, greens... whatever struck my mum and dad's fancy. That being said I mostly tried to avoid pink growing up - not because I dislike the colour - but I disliked the girly associations. Really frustrated me, especially as I did not want to be infantilised.
That and most pink shades don't really suit me. Salmons not being common children's wear. 😂
I think that dressing the genders in different colours was also done to avoid the awkward, “What did you have?” situation. Much easier to glance at the clothing colour and congratulate the mother on her lovely baby boy/girl. That was certainly the situation for my mother, her neighbours and friends when I was growing up in the U.K. in the 60s.
I love the whole period of "I've been told it's very specifically one way or the other but I don't know which is which"! Fashions are so painfully, delightfully absurd!
Made-up nonsense indeed! I couldn't have put it better myself. I find gender stereotyping in all its forms deeply disturbing. As a grandparent I found it impossible to buy gender neutral pyjamas to keep in the house in case of "little accidents" on the part of my grandsons or granddaughters when they were toddlers. The pyjamas were either khaki with dinosaurs, cars or superheros all over them, or pink and covered in flowers, butterflies or unicorns - and the kids refused to wear the "wrong" ones! 😮 Already indoctrinated by age 3! Made my blood boil.
Thank you for doing a boatload of research on this topic. It was really fascinating.
Thanks for your excellent episode! Color, as with so many things, shouldn't be an issue. As a child of the 50's, I was disappointed when I first was taken as a teen to get clothes for school and the dull, limited colors in the men's and young boy's section. It has never made sense to me, especially gravitating toward the arts and using color.
Hopefully the day will come when children and adults and wear and enjoy whichever colors they choose. There are real problems in the world and the color a person is wearing shouldn't be one of them.
Alice and Dorothy both wore blue, so it obviously wasn't required that girls wear pink. Sure, they were fictional, but if blue were never worn by girls, why would the authors have dressed them thus?
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.
I chose to not know the gender throughout my pregnancy and told everyone who wanted to contribute to keep things neutral. We got a lot of beige, white, pastel blues, greens and yellows. Best choice for our family! When we moved through items, it was easy to donate or resell them at a consignment shop. This was an interesting video!!