If you’ve ever studied film or advertising,
you’ll know that colors are not just randomly chosen. There’s a good reason why many personal
care products come in white packaging, and that’s because white symbolizes purity and
cleanliness. If we want to denote that something is natural,
we might use the colors green or brown. Things that are mysterious or wicked might
be painted black, while sensuality will almost always come in red. If we are trying to make a scene look happy,
we’ll use bright colors such as yellow or orange, and if we want something to exude
femininity, we might think about using the color pink. While different cultures give different meanings
to some colors, the meanings also cross cultures at times. Today we’ll look at mostly one color, in
this episode of the Infographics Show, Why Is Blue A Boys Color. When we talk about blue and its symbolism,
we must first think about what hue of blue are we talking about, because there are many. Crayola, the company we all know that makes
crayons, has 19 different blues. But we’ll keep this simple and talk about
two of the blues you all know well. Those are dark blue and light blue, or sky
blue. Dark blue can signify seriousness, or even
sadness (feeling blue), but also intelligence, integrity and power. That’s why you might find politicians donning
a blue suit, rather than say, a yellow and pink outfit. Light blue is a different animal, it symbolizes
purity, tranquility, harmony, security. But what has any of this to do with boys? Prior to the 19th century we didn’t have
a blue for boys and pink for girls binary rule. In fact, most kids just wore white or beige
or even rags if you came from the wrong side of the tracks. Historians tell us it was in the mid-19th
century that pastel colors became popular, but according to the book, “Pink and Blue:
Telling the Girls From the Boys in America,” at that time there wasn’t yet a pink and
blue rule. It’s confusing, though. Listen to what one writer said in the “Ladies'
Home Journal,” in 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.” Hmm, ok, so what happened? Well, that little snippet didn’t mean everyone
followed that rule. In fact, one historian tells us that until
the 1950s there was a kind of chaos when it came to colors. You can actually have a look online at something
Time magazine published in 1927. It is a chart of sex-appropriate colors. The chart is based on a survey of American
clothes stores and what those stores thought was the right color for boys and girls. More stores said pink was the most appropriate
color for boys, but not all. According to the writer of that book we mentioned,
after World War 2 the pink for girls and blue for boys’ thing started to become popular,
but he also says it didn’t really stick until the 1980s. “This happened during a time when mass marketing
was appearing,” said one sociologist about this phenomenon. “Being 'gender normal' is very important
to us, and as a marketing technique, if retailers can convince you that being gender normal
means you need to buy a certain product — cosmetics, plastic surgery, blue or pink clothing, etc.
— it just makes sense from a production or mass marketing perspective,” he told
Live Science. According to another writer, after the war
people were more than ready for some normalcy in their lives after the utter chaos of global
conflict. When labels such as Christian Dior were telling
women to don pink they did so, and they didn’t mind doing it. People wanted some stability in their lives,
according to that writer at least, and so color gender norms were met with no amount
of contempt…rebellion would come in the 60s, but for a while women mostly embraced
pink and men hugged blue. But why did girls get pink? Well, not everyone says pink is innately feminine,
it just became feminine. You see, the French, who were often thought
to be the leaders of fashion, used pink as a girls’ color. Other countries and cultures didn’t, but
hey, the French were the avant-garde when it came to clothes and so some people believe
we just followed them. Another sociologist from Italy looked deeper
into this blue and pink thing. He used technology to scan books on Google
that were published in the USA from 1880 to 1980, and you know what, he could find lots
of instances where someone wrote that blue was for boys, but he found no instances of
pink being called a boy’s color. “Pink seems to have been a feminine color
at least since the late 19th century,” he said in an interview, and he went as far to
say that this thing about a reversal and pink once being a boy’s color was probably an
urban legend. So, now it’s confusing. We must ask if indeed it’s true that blue
is a boy’s color and pink is a girl’s color. Is there something in our biology that makes
it that way? Do boys just like blue more and girls like
pink more? Scientists say this is just not clear, and
there is no way of proving it as we can’t go back in time. We are already influenced by societal norms. Live Science tells us, “The debate about
how, exactly, we got to the point where something as impartial as the color pink seems infused
with femininity, will probably rage on in the pages of academic journals.” So, what we don’t know is if girls and boys
innately prefer one of the colors. What we do know is that the rule hasn’t
always been there, but when the rule became clear companies that made clothes pounced
on it and it has never been reversed. That’s not to say boys don’t wear pink,
they do, but as little children they are more likely to be dressed in blue then they are
pink. It gets more interesting, though. Academics tell us that in the 50s and 60s
during a strong movement of feminism the colors became more unisex again. Many people rebelled against these color norms
as they thought that they contained inherent gender bias. People didn’t want to follow the dogmas
of gender norms and so for a while blue and pink were again sitting on the fence. In fact, some clothing labels totally dropped
the idea of sex-appropriate colors. Feminists argued that colors in themselves
were not innately feminine or masculine, and if you bought into that paradigm of blue for
boys and pink for girls you were conforming to a gender norm that just wasn’t true. Girls didn’t have to be girly and boys didn’t
have to be boyish, it was a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, and the palette was everyone’s. We wonder how many of you will get the 60s
gender reference in there. But then in the 80s things changed again,
according to one academic. He said that because prenatal testing was
developed, parents could go out and buy all their baby stuff before the little parcel
of flesh was delivered. Those parents wanted to know what to buy,
and manufactures were more than happy to tell them what to buy. You see, for those in the business of making
or selling clothes, having this color binary was a good thing. Why? Because if you bought blue for little Jack
and a year later a little Jill springs to life, the parents will have to buy another
set of clothes. We are told that the children of the rebels
of the 60s were nothing like their parents, and conformity was back in. The 80s were garish and bright and perhaps
fashion has never been more kitschy. Little girls in bright pink was something
you’d often see. It was a peculiar decade, perhaps the one
decade that people look back on with embarrassment regarding what they wore. Of course babies wear all kinds of colors,
and gender neutral clothes are in fashion. We know that for a long time parents have
chosen to dress their kids in pastel colors because these colors have a certain innocence
and beauty. Imagine if you looked at your baby pictures
and in all of them you are dressed in black, grinning at the camera, with your cute bright
red bonnet on. You might wonder if your parents were trying
to cultivate a future Satan’s slave. So, even if you’re against blue for boys
and pink for girls because it offends your sense of fairness, it’s more than likely
you’ll still adhere to some of the rules. The force is strong with color symbolism. The BBC writes about what it calls the blue
and pink gender myth, a myth in that girls and boys are not inherently suited to one
color. It’s society that manufactures this belief,
says the article. Kids in tests before the age of two when offered
a blue or pink object didn’t really have a color preference, but after the age of two
they conformed to the pink and blue norm. After all, they see that everywhere. In another test, kids aged three to five were
given different colors to wear, and they kind of formed sides, at the end of a few weeks
the kids just liked their own color. It didn’t matter what it was. Still this chicken and egg story remains unclear,
because scientists still don’t really know if there has always been something a little
more feminine in the color pink and that just evolved over time. It might not always be the case, but we must
ask how we have ended up with this binary. Did something natural happen, that was later
pushed by society and manufacturers? Science is still trying to find the answer
to the riddle. Some experts tell us women in their research
indeed favored bright colors such as red and pink, more than men did. Some of those experts even said that women
liked these colors because it was hard-wired from our hunter-gatherer days, when men did
the hard hunting and women did the gathering of brightly colored berries and such. Maybe that’s a stretch, but it’s worth
considering. Tests have been performed on men and women
to see what colors they prefer, and pink is not popular in most of these tests although
women do like pink more than men. More men pick blue than women do, but both
sexes seem to like the color. Anyway, we’ll now hand this conundrum over
to you and ask you what you think. Tell us in the comments. Also, be sure to
check out our other show These Are The Signs That You Are Going Through Puberty. Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t
forget to like, share and subscribe. See you next time.
