When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink? | Hacker News Reader

When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?

smithsonianmag.com

156 pointspguzmang77 comments

One practical aspect of the same clothes until age 6 is that kids grow so fast you need to re-use clothes. In the 18th and 19th century when having clothes made was much more expensive, and the number of children a family had was high, the re-use would have been essential. Any parent today who has had two kids of one sex and then the third comes along of the other sex finds they have a bunch of boxes of things that they don't want to use.

We sought to keep our baby clothes especially and up to about age 3 clothes as neutral as possible for that reason.

While boys and girls wore "dresses" till about age 6 or 7, till they were breached[1], they carried gender markers --at least in the upper classes. The clothes were not interchanged. The styles were different and people of the time would be able to identify the gender.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeching_(boys)

Two differences, fwiw:

1. Boys more often had square collars. For example, if you look at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_children_of_Charl..., the girl on the left has a rounded collar, while the boy 2nd-from-left has a squared-off collar.

2. Boys sometimes wore bands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bands_(neckwear) ). Due to their frequent use of lace they often are perceived as feminine today, but were perceived as masculine at the time. You can sort of see that on Roosevelt in the linked article. Some clearer examples are visible in the Wikipedia gallery of unbreeched boys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeching_(boys)#Gallery

Source, unfortunately paywalled (and it's a very minor part of the article, so not necessarily worth digging up unless you're interested in the main article subject): http://www.jstor.org/stable/1923418

Both of those gender markers look like they would be easy to alter with a bit of sewing, so the idea that clothing is gender neutral to make reuse easier still stands.

I find neutral clothing is not necessary because parents with older children are always handing down clothes of all colors. I would guess that having differently colored clothes means more are produced overall, but I think it is an acceptable price to pay for variety.

I am sure with higher infant mortality and bigger families there were massive cost savings in gender neutral clothes for small children. We have our first girl due. I went to the local semi-quality big chain store and a stack of nice pink onesies were on the rack for under $5 (AUD) each. I got them to the self-checkout and found they were all marked down to around $3 which is less than a large cup of coffee around here. So although we will reuse our huge supply of robot, dinosaur and truck outfits, colour coding her gender in public for the benefit of strangers isn't going to be a huge financial burden.

More pissed off with the pink toy aisles. I can buy my boys a semi-decent quality kitchen to play Gordon Ramsey in for $110 AUD on special at the same store available in pastel pink only (all the kitchens stuff has pictures of girls on it and is pink - all designed by or for Americans I guess). A similar gender neutral product in the same store is available by online order only for nearly twice the price. So the boys have a pink kitchen because fuck it - boys cook and women haven't been trapped in a kitchen for decades.

Never heard that dresses were gender-neutral for small children in the 19th century. Seems I've seen plenty of old photographs that show boys wearing traditionally "masculine" clothing, though commonly with short pants, transitioning to long pants during adolescence.

I love the picture of FDR in a dress.

http://media.smithsonianmag.com/images/pink-and-blue-Frankli...

The 19th century photographs of children you see are, as a general rule, the children of people wealthy enough to afford photographs of their children.

The effect of this is two-fold; firstly, you're seeing a small segment of society, and secondly, because having a photograph taken is special, you're not seeing everyday clothing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeching_(boys)

It's hard to say if a 5 year old is a boy or girl withought clothing identifiers so it's not always obvious. However, from a practical standpoint a dress takes less effort to make, you don't outgrow them as fast, and it makes changing faster so I can see why it would be the gender neutral choice.

But why does it need to be obvious? Traditionally sexism led to people liking to flout their boys, but today I would hope we would be passed this (albeit pie in the sky thinking, we obviously aren't past whats in a kids nethers).

I can't wait for the day people just don't give a crap if the 5 year old has a dick or not.

For me it's the simple issue about knowing which gender pronoun to use. It seems rude to call someone's child "it."

I think "they" is preferred over "it", and not rude at all.

Really? That sounds worse to me...

"How old are they?" "When did you have them?" "Are they a boy or a girl?" "They are adorable."

I would probably just drop the pronoun completely.

"How old?" "When did you give birth?" "Boy or girl?" "So adorable!"

>"How old are they?" "When did you have them?" "Are they a boy or a girl?" "They are adorable."

Those sentences sound completely normal and grammatical to me.

> Those sentences sound completely normal and grammatical to me.

Only if you are talking about more than one person. If you are talking about a single person those sentences sound bizarre.

'They' is fine as a singular, for instance the person that you have just replied to, they say that you are completely wrong, and I agree with them. See?

Look up the "epicene they".

If you say "how old is they?" or "they is adorable" it will sound cooler, like you're speaking some sort of patois.

I just read this fun Wikipedia article for language nerds:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

That's pretty cool. The verb conjugation for "to be" seems to be actually useful in this context. It sounds a little wrong to me, but that's just a matter of habit, and it would probably flow better in written English than writing he/she.

You're in dangerous territory if you ask boy or girl - people often assume their child's gender is as obvious to you as it is to them. I've gotten some unexpected hostility from strangers this way.

"How old is your child?" "How old is the little one?"

When pronoun is unknown, "they" is the common choice. At queer conferences it is becoming the practice to include preferred pronouns on your name tag.

I demand to be formally addressed as the Wizard of Speed and Time.

well, it is highly dependant on the language, some require distinction between sexes, and using a gender neutral term is sometimes offensive.

As a Father of four, this makes a whole lot of sense to me. I'd guess they'd potty train faster in a dress than in pants.

I don't know about potty training. Disposable nappies are a miracle of habituation. It seems they can deposit bucket loads in them and never know it - at least until they saturate and the dam bursts.

Living in a climate that is warm to hot most of the year, little kids basically just need a nappy and a tshirt or singlet around the house. It looks very ghetto but it is practical and not unlike wearing a dress I guess.

Chucking shorts on over the nappy to dress up for a public outing doesn't seem to alter the complexity of things appreciably. Little boy fire engines take great pride in being accessorised with a fire hose and whipping it out never seems to present any challenges or inhibitions to them. At least compared with aiming it. Perhaps we should paint a fly in the toilet bowl.

They were common in early 20th century as well. I have photographs of both my grandfathers wearing them as small children.

My guess is that it was very rare but because of agendas, it'll be played up and mentioned to seem as though it was more common than it actually was. Just me guessing... knowing nothing about the subject.

Yes, you don't know. This isn't a matter of opinion or guessing; its a matter of established fact, with lots of written and photographic documentation. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan supposedly said: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." You add nothing to a rational discussion with nasty slander.

Fantastic quote - I'm going to use that.

isn't this a nice example of healthy, unbiased skepticism?

lmao. "agendas".

No, the commenter admits to "knowing nothing about the subject."

To be credible, a skeptic can't be ignorant.

> To be credible, a skeptic can't be ignorant.

No. To be credible, a skeptic must begin by asking honest questions.

Well, if we are playing that game, I think it was a plot to hide the fact that we were being invaded by a race of alien dwarves and having a common dress for everyone below a certain height was their method of avoiding detection... knowing nothing about the subject.

> Today’s color dictate wasn’t established until the 1940s, as a result of Americans’ preferences as interpreted by manufacturers and retailers.

That is the bit of history I'd like to read far more about, from primary sources. Specifically to suss out whether manufacturers and retailers interpreted these color preferences or manufactured them.

Also, it's annoying when sites inject links and other shit into copying and pasting a sentence from the article to quote it elsewhere.

Now I'm not colorblind but I do know the girl in that first picture isn't wearing pink and OHMYGODTHATSABOY...

Related segment on QI:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f7urmRaRxY&t=2m12s

It's only within the last few Presidential election cycles that the Republicans have become "red" and the Democrats "blue," which is the opposite of what you might expect.

What has "always" been true usually has very definite origins, sometimes quite recent.

Am now just waiting for the GOP to adopt the red flag as a symbol and then the great circle of irony will be complete.

Everyone who is not colorblind perceives that there is a special emotion linked to a specific color. This applys to Children as well - they are not emotionless entitiys until the age of 6. They have thier favourite colors afore.

It would be nice to return to the times of gender-neutral clothing, and perhaps keep it that way until the child expresses a preference. After all, genitals don't determine gender, they determine sex.

Side point, but I'd be careful about assuming historical children's clothing implies more gender-neutrality. It aligned with a different conception of gender and childhood, but still a very particular idea of gender roles.

To admittedly simplify something that varied by time/place and was fairly complex, here's one take: all children wore "feminine" clothing at a young age, and were primarily cared for by women (mother or, for wealthier families, female nannies). Boys started wearing more "masculine" elements of clothing as they grew older, eventually "graduating" to trousers (sometimes via an intermediate period of shorts), which often coincided with social movement to the company of the male side of the household and the boy being considered a "young man". There are still some pretty strong normative gender roles there, with "feminine" clothing still associated with non-manliness, just organized along a somewhat different pattern and timeline.

I don't expect offering children a preference is a particularly useful thing to do. In all except a tiny minority of cases (where the person has some form of mental illness, or possibly genetic abnormalities) gender and sex are equivalent. The abnormal cases are generally going to become apparent through behaviour anyway, and can be dealt with then.

That gender discussion is so weird. It seems people who are concerned about being forced into a role because of their gender go to great lengths and mental acrobatics to define some kind of new genders. So they struggle and struggle to actually define new roles they can be confined to.

Wouldn't it be easier to simply not worry about gender at all and simply use your sex in any way you please?

> Wouldn't it be easier to simply not worry about gender at all and simply use your sex in any way you please?

The people who do this fit into the box marked 'genderqueer'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genderqueer

I don't think so - just because you don't worry about gender boxes doesn't mean you want to live all kinds of gender roles.

I've always felt Dar Williams put it very nicely (in song):

"Dar Williams - When I was a Boy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE5YzRr9yPo

http://www.metrolyrics.com/when-i-was-a-boy-lyrics-dar-willi...

I have trouble understanding what she (he?) is complaining about. People offering to walk her home? The only real pan point I see is the neighbor complaining - hardly something that should ruin a whole life?

Going from being perceived as strong, independent and able to take care of yourself, to something dainty and fragile and unable to take of yourself?

Going from being able to do what you want to being put in a box - both for him and her (him forced to not express his emotions) -- both being forced by society to "behave properly" as a boy/girl?

About the "being perceived as fragile" thing: women are not being offered a walk home because they are fragile, but because they are more valuable than men. Men are in fact more endangered on the street than women, but nobody cares. Does she/he really prefer a life in which nobody cares about her well being?

Also, is it disputed that on average women are physically less strong than men? And even if they were the same on average, suppose the women is pregnant (you can't always know) - should a pregnant woman get into kung fu fights with street thugs? What I mean is: this is not just perception, just reality.

For the second part I also don't have a lot of patience. Just ignore the neighbor and do what you want? You can always find somebody who disagrees with whatever you do, so that can't be a criterion.

Anyone walking home alone is vulnerable to attack by multiple attackers -- sex has nothing to do with it.

Are you saying that you fear for the life of all your friends when they walk home alone, but you only care about your female friends enough to walk them home -- or are you guessing about other people's intentions?

Anyway, clearly the song doesn't speak to you -- which is fine. It speaks to me, and I'd thought I'd share. Sorry if you didn't get anything from it.

As I explained, indeed it is not the risk of an attack, it is the (biological) value of women that led to this culture of protecting them. Men are much more expendable than women - number of women available is the main limiting factor in creating more humans.

Of course I fear for the life of my friends, but only men are expected to risk their life to protect the life of women. It's kind of funny that feminists (or genderists? Or what?) envy men for that "privilege".

Yes clearly I am not the target group for that song, which seems to be about people where friends don't fear for their male friends. Or what is it's point? I am not "guessing at other people's intentions", I interpret the song which clearly seems to state that only women get offered company for going home.

In any case I also feel that "my friends want to make sure I get home safely" as a complaint is firmly in "first world problems" territory.

I very much doubt that the biological value has anything to do with it (as in the "absolute", evolutionary biological value). I think society evolve much too fast for that to be a lingering vestige from when that would actually matter in an evolutionary sense.

The complaint isn't about "my friends wanting to make sure I get home safely", it's about "my friends thinking I'm unable to make sane judgements, and take care of myself -- unlike when I was a child and was afforded equal consideration to my male peers".

You doubt that the fact that a woman has to be pregnant for 9 months to have a baby (risking her life, too) whereas a man just needs to spill sperm for 10 seconds has any impact on society today? Well you only see what you want to see, is all I can say to that...

As for the complaint about caring friends, that seems to be all in the interpretation and is one good example of why I reject feminism: it seems to be all about negative thinking and feeling like a victim. You COULD think "hey it's nice that my friends worry about me" but instead you think "ugh, my friends think I am helpless and irresponsible". That's just a negative, miserable, useless attitude, sorry.

I didn't say I didn't think it had any impact on society. I said I doubted it had an impact on "it"; "it" being how young adult males and females are perceived in society today with a view to self-reliance and independence.

Well you kind of turned the issue around - why is offering to go home with somebody a challenge to their self-reliance and independence? I would have thought it is about safety and common sense. In the worst case it gives you one more option (go home with a companion), which would make you effectively more independent?

My information on why red/pink was associated with males is that red dye is more expensive. Thus the wearing of red is a status symbol.

(Source: talk on Vikings at Jorvik Viking museum/village)

Why have young children’s clothing styles changed so dramatically?

As opposed to all other demographic segments?

do you not get the Victorias Secret catalog?

It is interesting that some social conservatives (or maybe just non-liberals?) care about consciously enforcing gender roles through clothing. This would seem to imply that they are similar in their beliefs with feminists when it comes to the nature/nurture question: that gender is enforced through culture. But this is usually thought of as a very liberal idea (or whatever I should call it).

Pink as an effeminate color has always seemed kind of arbitrary to me. I just can't see how a color would have a specific gender.

Where is data that link political persuasion and clothing preference? I see all kinds of people at Babies'R'Us making the same color choices.

I assumed that social conservatives would be more likely to have a strong opinion about how gender roles should be. But it was purely an assumption.

I think you're missing something. I don't see anyone enforcing anything. What if people like differentiation? Your comments imply that it's bad. I come from a family with adopted siblings. My siblings are very similar to their biological parents, who were unknown to them (and all of us) until they were 20+. Let me put it another way... They don't just share similar genes in their "appearance". From where I sit, nurture plays very little in shaping a person in a benevolent environment. I have decades of case study around me to support that view. I also believe that part of human socialization is about mimicry. Why do most people wear jeans? Why do we bother with pleasant looking hair-styles? Why don't men wear dresses? These don't define who I am, and I believe have little influence on the way I think (to the best of my knowledge). If girls want to wear pink, it's not a bad thing, nor should it be seen as so.

> I don't see anyone enforcing anything.

I was talking specifically about those who used clothing with that intent, not people who just go with what's fashionable and don't care much to or forth.

> What if people like differentiation?

I guess then that is what they like?

> Your comments imply that it's bad.

It does? I think enforcing gender roles is a generally a silly pursuit, since I believe more in nature than nurture (though as I've said it isn't always even the goal), and because I think that it can easily lead to a majority ("straight" gendered) suppressing a minority. When it comes to clothing, it's more of an interesting socio-historical thing to me, since I don't think it matters much one way or the other.

> I come from a family with adopted siblings. My siblings are very similar to their biological parents, who were unknown to them (and all of us) until they were 20+. Let me put it another way... They don't just share similar genes in their "appearance". From where I sit, nurture plays very little in shaping a person in a benevolent environment. I have decades of case study around me to support that view.

Ok. Hmm. Is this the part where I'm supposed to violently disagree with you?

> If girls want to wear pink, it's not a bad thing, nor should it be seen as so.

But I think that it's a bad thing? Ok.

Maybe pink occurs less in its most intense form, in my mind it's a 'pale' shade. It's presence in nature is also rarely attached to hard emotions (unlike red : blood, fire; black : rot, death, obscurity, etc etc) and reminds me of smooth skin, cat paws, flower petals. Things that are soft and smooth, which are qualities I attach naturally to girls.

Just my two subjective cents.

Sorry to be crude, but there is a very non-arbitrary reason for pink to be associated with females (and to a lesser extent, blue with males). In fact I always assumed this was indeed the cause for the association - I'm very surprised to learn it used to be reversed.

If a man's crude bits have gone blue then they should probably seek urgent medical attention.

> Sorry to be crude, but there is a very non-arbitrary reason for pink to be associated with females (and to a lesser extent, blue with males).

You're excusing yourself for being crude? How is this crude?

> Sorry to be crude, but there is a very non-arbitrary reason for pink to be associated with females (and to a lesser extent, blue with males). In fact I always assumed this was indeed the cause for the association - I'm very surprised to learn it used to be reversed.

So what is the non-arbitrary reason? The one mentioned in the article?

> So what is the non-arbitrary reason? The one mentioned in the article?

You seem smart enough to have figured out the implication, but I believe s/he meant that the inner portion of the labia and opening to the vagina are pink; the word pink is also used as a slag term for the female genitalia.

Well in that case: the penis glans is pink.

Sure. I'm not endorsing the theory, merely stating it more directly (or so I think - I might be wrong).

You're not wrong, that's what I meant. Well, and that the tunica albuginea is bluish, I believe.

What passages from the text made you think she meant that?

This part:

> Sorry to be crude, but there is a very non-arbitrary reason for pink to be associated with females (and to a lesser extent, blue with males).

I thought the unstated crude, very non-arbitrary reason the grandparent poster aluded to was clear, but spelled out what I thought it to be in case I'm either wrong or someone didn't draw the inference.

My bad, I thought you were sourcing the article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com