Summary: In an article published in Forbes magazine titled 'How Pink Became a Color for Girls', Kim Elsesser discusses that pink was long considered the preferred color for boys. Articles dating back to 1890, 1918, and 1927 confirm that pink was for boys and blue for girls. Valerie Steele told CNN that she believes American millionaire Henry Huntington began changing this trend in favor of pink as a color for girls when he acquired the paintings 'The Blue Boy', depicting a boy in blue clothes, and 'Pinky', depicting a girl in pink clothes.

If you are buying clothes for your newborn, what color would you choose? The general rule these days says girls wear pink, while boys wear blue. But wait and question, because we often live in an age of reversed and inverted rules, as this was not always the case. In 1918, an article in Ladies' Home Journal advised that 'the accepted rule is pink for boys and blue for girls, because pink, being a more striking and stronger color, is more suitable for boys, while blue, being more delicate and soft, is prettier and more suitable for girls.'

Thus, how did pink become a symbol of femininity? And is blue considered a masculine color or was it 'stolen' from females?

It is believed that American millionaire Henry Huntington began changing the trend in favor of pink as a color for girls when he acquired the paintings 'The Blue Boy', depicting a boy in blue clothes, and 'Pinky', depicting a girl in pink clothes (Pixels)

Pink... masculine

When we think of pink, we likely conjure images of little girls in pink dresses, with pink toys like Barbie or a Disney princess in a pretty dress, as this color is largely associated today with delicacy and femininity, but this cognitive bias is very recent and reversed.

"If we go back to the 18th century, young boys and girls of the upper classes wore pink, blue, and other colors uniformly," said Valerie Steele, museum director at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York. In fact, pink was considered a masculine color. In old catalogs and books, pink was the color assigned to little boys, as said Leatrice Eiseman, color expert and executive director of the Pantone Color Institute. She continued, "It was related to the mother color red, which was a warm, emotional, more active and aggressive color, and despite the shade reduction, it was a color associated with boys." And in an article titled "Pink or Blue," published in the trade magazine "Children's Department" in 1918, it stated that the accepted rule is to choose pink for boys and blue for girls, and the article explained that "the reason is that pink, being a strong and clear color, is more suitable for boys."

By the mid-20th century, girls wore clothes resembling their mothers', and boys wore clothes resembling their fathers' (Pixels)

Color strategy

After World War II, companies were looking for a way to restart the consumer wheel. Men returned from battlefields and women were forced back from factories to homes, and society was reorganizing its roles. Here, color strategy entered the game. Since blue was already occupied by the image of the soldier, sailor, and engineer, it was necessary to find a new 'feminine' color for girls, a color suggesting softness, innocence, and romance, tempting consumers to buy more dresses, toys, and accessories. So pink was chosen, not because it is girls' natural favorite color, but because it is a color easily linked to emotional appeal.

According to Bloomberg, 'Pink was not associated with femininity until after World War II, when clever advertisers began directing pastel pink household appliances and furnishings toward women as a solution to military-inspired fashion and wartime textile rationing. This was part of the post-war effort to push women out of the workforce and re-establish their traditional roles as housewives, thereby defining the scope of femininity within the domestic sphere and symbolizing it within a self-contained pink world of femininity, indicating a specific level of female experience.'

As the color distinction between genders became more pronounced, some negatives emerged, as manufacturers rushed to meet the demand for gender-specific products (Pixels)

This was not true

And in an article published in Forbes magazine titled 'How Pink Became a Color for Girls', Kim Elsesser discusses that pink was long considered the preferred color for boys, and articles from 1890, 1918, and 1927 confirm that pink was for boys and blue for girls. Valerie Steele told CNN that she believes American millionaire Henry Huntington began changing this trend in favor of pink as a color for girls when he acquired the paintings 'The Blue Boy', depicting a boy in blue clothes, and 'Pinky', depicting a girl in pink clothes. These two paintings, which received extensive media coverage, cemented the American public's belief that 'blue was for boys and pink for girls for many centuries, but this was not true.'

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Other articles indicate that at the beginning of the 20th century, stores realized they could make greater profits by associating a specific color with gender, because if not everyone wears similar clothes, parents would need to buy more clothes. Before that, no one felt the need to dress girls in pink or boys in blue; rather, they felt it was wrong, as 'in 1880, parents rarely felt comfortable dressing their one-year-old son in clothes that expressed his masculinity or choosing clothes that highlighted their baby daughter's femininity. Gender-categorized clothing was seen as inappropriate for young children, whose non-sexual innocence was often mentioned as one of their greatest traits.'

When we think of pink, we likely conjure images of little girls in pink dresses (Pixels)

Social construct