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Comment by k_os | Hacker News Reader

Do you believe marketers have an agenda about indoctrinating girls to like pink?

In the hopes that you are not a conspiracy theorist you must assume marketers haven't done any research about what girls innately like and are purely marketing products based on what you might call 'traditional' views.

It's much easier to market sugar than it is to market broccoli so that's what most foods marketed today contain. I don't believe we like sugarry treats because of marketing. I believe marketers market flavours of sugar because sugar is what we're wired to like first and foremost.

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http://www.wisegeek.com/have-pink-and-blue-always-been-consi...

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-St... - extract from this:

'For example, a June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”'

Thanks, I didn't know that. I myself don't know if I dislike pink because i associate it with weakness or not.

Do you have any articles about toy function being socially conditioned into genders? Girls toys mostly consist of 'nurturer' stereotypes. For example tea sets, doll houses or baby dolls with baby cribs.

> what girls innately like

This makes the assumption that there is indeed something innate about purchasing. Short of credible psychological research, most market research relies on past sales data, past products, as well as a survey of existing products. Marketing, then, forms a self-stabilising and self-perpetuated system that makes future decisions based on its own past decisions.

This is remarkably close to Adorno and Horkheimer's view of the cultural industry: The underlying thesis here is that the culture industry preselects cultural production. Within the constraints of that preselection, the customer is free to choose whatever he or she fancies. This in turn leads to a culture industry that can claim that every subsequent selection is indeed strictly based on past consumer behaviour. After a while, this claim can even be truthful, if this initial preselection is ignored. That is why the Dialectic of Enlightenment calls this a mass deception.

1918:

"The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." - Earnshaw's Infants' Department

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink#Gender

A handy way to sell things twice if boys and girls need different colors. Maybe not so much for dolls, but certainly for clothes (can't pass on clothes from older sibling if gender differs).

Perhaps the main desire being served is to be able to announce "I am a boy" or "I am a girl".

Also note that there aren't many pink first person shooters.

The camouflage performance of pink in a realistic setting could play a role; you'd have to have a very pink world.. hm. (Unreal Tournament maybe? In my mind it was kinda purple..)

Pink world wouldn't be a problem I think. Many FPS seem to play in weirdly colored fantasy worlds.

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