Blue and Pink: The Unknown Dichotomy

Has this distinction appeared “out of the Blue”?

When you think of a newborn baby, wrapped up in a blanket surrounded by gifts and toys, how will you instantly decide if it’s a strong little boy or a precious baby girl?

You’ll look for the pink engraved hairbrush, the satin bows. Or, you’ll look for the toy trains and the “My First 100 words” book.

We are conditioned -subconsciously - to associate colors like blue and pink with gender: masculinity vs femininity,  since the moment we first see daylight. I couldn’t help but ask: where did this association derive from, and why is it so persistent?

Interestingly, and contrary to popular belief, in the early 1900s pink was the colour associated with masculinity and strength, whilst blue was considered more delicate and girly. Through the rise of consumerism in this profit-driven world, though, the roles swapped. Enterprises realized that they could sell much more by relying on gender-based product categorization. As a result, you’d buy all the baby blue toys and decorations for your son, and then be forced to repurchase all these items again, just in PINK!

Slowly but steadily, this ideal was everywhere: from Marilyn Monroe’s dazzling pink gown in “ Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” to Barbie’s all-pink dream house, the stereotype spread uncontrollably. In parallel, blue became associated with power, as seen in Daniel Craig’s “Skyfall” hypermasculinity. One could almost trademark the words: Blue and Pink by this time.

So, bias against a gender doesn’t just show up out of the “blue” . It’s interlaced in the tiniest details we have accepted as normal.

Little girls told to “Be pretty” and to “Speak Nicely” nearly always grow up and become women who are ashamed of taking up space, seeking help, or showing ambition. We, as a society, have accepted that these stages of pain are inevitable. We have praised and admired their “courage”, their “kindness” and their suffering. This has led to an immensely unavoidable rise in internalized masochism: when a woman starts to believe that hurting -alone- is good , that it is virtuous and admirable, and that it’s directly proportional to her worth.

To conclude, the world doesn’t directly push us into hating who we are. However, it does provide us with every resource to end up doing so.