When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?

Every generation brings a new definition of masculinity and femininity that manifests itself in children’s dress

  • By Jeanne Maglaty
  • Smithsonian.com, April 08, 2011, Subscribe
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Pink and blue gender Pink and blue arrived as colors for babies in the mid-19th century, yet the two colors were not promoted as gender signifiers until just before World War I.

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    Little Franklin Delano Roosevelt sits primly on a stool, his white skirt spread smoothly over his lap, his hands clasping a hat trimmed with a marabou feather. Shoulder-length hair and patent leather party shoes complete the ensemble.

    We find the look unsettling today, yet social convention of 1884, when FDR was photographed at age 2 1/2, dictated that boys wore dresses until age 6 or 7, also the time of their first haircut. Franklin’s outfit was considered gender-neutral.

    But nowadays people just have to know the sex of a baby or young child at first glance, says Jo B. Paoletti, a historian at the University of Maryland and author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America, to be published later this year. Thus we see, for example, a pink headband encircling the bald head of an infant girl.

    Why have young children’s clothing styles changed so dramatically? How did we end up with two “teams”—boys in blue and girls in pink?

    “It’s really a story of what happened to neutral clothing,” says Paoletti, who has explored the meaning of children’s clothing for 30 years. For centuries, she says, children wore dainty white dresses up to age 6. “What was once a matter of practicality—you dress your baby in white dresses and diapers; white cotton can be bleached—became a matter of ‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong thing, they’ll grow up perverted,’ ” Paoletti says.

    The march toward gender-specific clothes was neither linear nor rapid. Pink and blue arrived, along with other pastels, as colors for babies in the mid-19th century, yet the two colors were not promoted as gender signifiers until just before World War I—and even then, it took time for popular culture to sort things out.

    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.” Other sources said blue was flattering for blonds, pink for brunettes; or blue was for blue-eyed babies, pink for brown-eyed babies, according to Paoletti.

    In 1927, Time magazine printed a chart showing sex-appropriate colors for girls and boys according to leading U.S. stores. In Boston, Filene’s told parents to dress boys in pink. So did Best & Co. in New York City, Halle’s in Cleveland and Marshall Field in Chicago.

    Today’s color dictate wasn’t established until the 1940s, as a result of Americans’ preferences as interpreted by manufacturers and retailers. “It could have gone the other way,” Paoletti says.

    So the baby boomers were raised in gender-specific clothing. Boys dressed like their fathers, girls like their mothers. Girls had to wear dresses to school, though unadorned styles and tomboy play clothes were acceptable.


    Little Franklin Delano Roosevelt sits primly on a stool, his white skirt spread smoothly over his lap, his hands clasping a hat trimmed with a marabou feather. Shoulder-length hair and patent leather party shoes complete the ensemble.

    We find the look unsettling today, yet social convention of 1884, when FDR was photographed at age 2 1/2, dictated that boys wore dresses until age 6 or 7, also the time of their first haircut. Franklin’s outfit was considered gender-neutral.

    But nowadays people just have to know the sex of a baby or young child at first glance, says Jo B. Paoletti, a historian at the University of Maryland and author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America, to be published later this year. Thus we see, for example, a pink headband encircling the bald head of an infant girl.

    Why have young children’s clothing styles changed so dramatically? How did we end up with two “teams”—boys in blue and girls in pink?

    “It’s really a story of what happened to neutral clothing,” says Paoletti, who has explored the meaning of children’s clothing for 30 years. For centuries, she says, children wore dainty white dresses up to age 6. “What was once a matter of practicality—you dress your baby in white dresses and diapers; white cotton can be bleached—became a matter of ‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong thing, they’ll grow up perverted,’ ” Paoletti says.

    The march toward gender-specific clothes was neither linear nor rapid. Pink and blue arrived, along with other pastels, as colors for babies in the mid-19th century, yet the two colors were not promoted as gender signifiers until just before World War I—and even then, it took time for popular culture to sort things out.

    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.” Other sources said blue was flattering for blonds, pink for brunettes; or blue was for blue-eyed babies, pink for brown-eyed babies, according to Paoletti.

    In 1927, Time magazine printed a chart showing sex-appropriate colors for girls and boys according to leading U.S. stores. In Boston, Filene’s told parents to dress boys in pink. So did Best & Co. in New York City, Halle’s in Cleveland and Marshall Field in Chicago.

    Today’s color dictate wasn’t established until the 1940s, as a result of Americans’ preferences as interpreted by manufacturers and retailers. “It could have gone the other way,” Paoletti says.

    So the baby boomers were raised in gender-specific clothing. Boys dressed like their fathers, girls like their mothers. Girls had to wear dresses to school, though unadorned styles and tomboy play clothes were acceptable.

    When the women’s liberation movement arrived in the mid-1960s, with its anti-feminine, anti-fashion message, the unisex look became the rage—but completely reversed from the time of young Franklin Roosevelt. Now young girls were dressing in masculine—or at least unfeminine—styles, devoid of gender hints. Paoletti found that in the 1970s, the Sears, Roebuck catalog pictured no pink toddler clothing for two years.

    “One of the ways [feminists] thought that girls were kind of lured into subservient roles as women is through clothing,” says Paoletti. “ ‘If we dress our girls more like boys and less like frilly little girls . . . they are going to have more options and feel freer to be active.’ ”

    John Money, a sexual identity researcher at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, argued that gender was primarily learned through social and environmental cues. “This was one of the drivers back in the ’70s of the argument that it’s ‘nurture not nature,’ ” Paoletti says.

    Gender-neutral clothing remained popular until about 1985. Paoletti remembers that year distinctly because it was between the births of her children, a girl in ’82 and a boy in ’86. “All of a sudden it wasn’t just a blue overall; it was a blue overall with a teddy bear holding a football,” she says. Disposable diapers were manufactured in pink and blue.

    Prenatal testing was a big reason for the change. Expectant parents learned the sex of their unborn baby and then went shopping for “girl” or “boy” merchandise. (“The more you individualize clothing, the more you can sell,” Paoletti says.) The pink fad spread from sleepers and crib sheets to big-ticket items such as strollers, car seats and riding toys. Affluent parents could conceivably decorate for baby No. 1, a girl, and start all over when the next child was a boy.

    Some young mothers who grew up in the 1980s deprived of pinks, lace, long hair and Barbies, Paoletti suggests, rejected the unisex look for their own daughters. “Even if they are still feminists, they are perceiving those things in a different light than the baby boomer feminists did,” she says. “They think even if they want their girl to be a surgeon, there’s nothing wrong if she is a very feminine surgeon.”

    Another important factor has been the rise of consumerism among children in recent decades. According to child development experts, children are just becoming conscious of their gender between ages 3 and 4, and they do not realize it’s permanent until age 6 or 7. At the same time, however, they are the subjects of sophisticated and pervasive advertising that tends to reinforce social conventions. “So they think, for example, that what makes someone female is having long hair and a dress,’’ says Paoletti. “They are so interested—and they are so adamant in their likes and dislikes.”

    In researching and writing her book, Paoletti says, she kept thinking about the parents of children who don’t conform to gender roles: Should they dress their children to conform, or allow them to express themselves in their dress? “One thing I can say now is that I’m not real keen on the gender binary—the idea that you have very masculine and very feminine things. The loss of neutral clothing is something that people should think more about. And there is a growing demand for neutral clothing for babies and toddlers now, too.”

    “There is a whole community out there of parents and kids who are struggling with ‘My son really doesn’t want to wear boy clothes, prefers to wear girl clothes.’ ” She hopes one audience for her book will be people who study gender clinically. The fashion world may have divided children into pink and blue, but in the world of real individuals, not all is black and white.

    Correction: An earlier version of this story misattributed the 1918 quotation about pink and blue clothes to the Ladies’ Home Journal. It appeared in the June 1918 issue of Earnshaw's Infants’ Department, a trade publication.


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    Comments (96)

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    Interesting...

    Posted by BBS on January 7,2012 | 06:48 PM

    I remember a history program on (I think)PBS over 10 years ago. It stated that historicaly in China, boys wore Blue to represent the sky while girls wore brown, to represent earth, or pink to represent flesh and blood. The blue was to represent a superior status. This practice made it's way to the U.S. after WW2 when the soldiers on the Pacific front were exposed to it. While this wasn't mentioned in the article, the time line matches up. It also explains why I was really fond of dressing my kids in green, yellow and orange when I could find it.

    Posted by Siobhan Powell on January 5,2012 | 02:44 AM

    It is troubling to see John Money cited as an authority - today his theory that gender is completely determined by environment has fallen from favor; stories have come to light of the tragedies suffered by children with genital abnormalities whose up-bringings he supervised.

    Posted by BDL on January 5,2012 | 02:20 AM

    I had my first baby in 1978 and there were loads of pink things and pink was definitely a "girl" color. (My mother-in-law was upset when I dressed my pretty little blond girl in blue for fear people would think she was a boy. During my tomboy phase in fifth and sixth grade (1960-1962)I avoided pink and lace at all costs although we had to wear dresses and skirts at that time). All of us tomboy friends turned out to be pretty girly-girl though.

    Posted by Linda Musser on January 5,2012 | 06:18 PM

    I remember having this conversation with my mother. She assurered me that boys did actually wear dresses for quiet a while. I can remember saying that it was silly and stupid. I was very young, maybe 6-7. And if I remember correctly - I was wearing pants.

    Posted by Mary Briggs on December 30,2011 | 12:25 AM

    VERY interesting to know that the pink/blue standard has flipped. The general arc of recent history, from the industrial revolution forward, seems to be one of specialization that tends to separate us from one another as human beings. How can we show that we are "special" but not "different," and establish a clear identity? This impulse is reinforced, expanded, and exploited for profit in almost every industry. Our insecurities and fears, and need to belong, make us receptive to this exploitation. Our anxieties thus maintained, we focus on trivial external differentiators rather than our internal life, core values and common humanity. If you approach me, I will interact with you as a fellow human being, not as a man or woman, black or white, Jew or Muslim, undocumented immigrant or natural citizen.... whether you wear pink or blue. Peace, and Happy New Year.

    Posted by RealtorTodd on December 30,2011 | 07:01 AM

    My dad was born in 1921 and my grandmother kept a list of all the presents he got for his 1st birthday. Everything he got was pink and the decorations were pink as well.

    Posted by Judy on December 28,2011 | 06:01 PM

    Thank you for educating me Rachel Maddow. I prefer gender neutral clothing. In fact, one should seriously think of the following: In the state of economy in the U.S.A., and many people are struggling due to poverty; What would a mother/dad do if their child is a boy, it's very cold out (they happen to be homeless), and pink clothing, blankets are all they receive? Would the homeless parents shun the pink clothing? Not I, if it were me, when you're poor and down and out the color coding of the sexes can no longer exist because the need to survive kicks in. Yes, the gender neutral clothing seems (to me) wiser. I detest being color coded as if, "what color file folder do we place you in..."

    Posted by Sandra Herrera Lara on December 28,2011 | 01:24 PM

    The author didn't mention that John Money based his ideas on his own "research" on twin boys (one raised as a girl after a freak accident during a circumcision). The research was very poorly done and he ignored what was actually happening to promote his own nurture over nature ideas. Unfortunately, many people picked up on what he was publishing and followed his lead.

    Posted by Joan Bradley on December 28,2011 | 01:16 PM

    And then there were the even earlier times when men wore wigs, tights, frills and various other ornate clothing. There have been times when a man who wore no beard was suspect and other times when wearing a beard was a real no-no. Times change, and I hope it changes enough so that no specific color or style is foisted on us. As for blue and pink, why not green and yellow or red? Seems so arbitrary.

    Posted by Vern on December 27,2011 | 07:02 PM

    I have all boys, my oldest loves pink, it's one of his favorite colors, has been for years. I neither encourage nor discourage color choices, heck, he looks great in it. All my boys have played with baby dolls, play kitchens, dress up, I encourage it, it's using their imagination. It won't magically turn them into girls. They still love "boy" stuff, sports, rough housing, skateboarding, bugs, dirt, etc. I don't understand the need people have to force children into a roll at such an early age. Let them be who they are and enjoy their childhood, it goes too fast as it is.

    Posted by Jessica on December 17,2011 | 05:33 AM

    CORRECTION

    the color switch happened because around WWII nazis marked homosexual men with a pink triangle and so pink became associated with being "anti-masculine" and "effeminate." in order to maintain strong masculine color coding and education blue previously 'girlie' (think virgin mary) colors were traded for pink colors. Parents raised their children with colors according to the connotations that those colors held. once pink became feminized - it was no longer suitable for categorizing masculine boys.

    Posted by allie on October 24,2011 | 01:40 AM

    Hayley, but of you say that girls need to be marked as "different", that would mean that masculinity - and not femininity or both genders equally - is perceived as the standard, that girls then "differ" from. And why would, or should, girls' things be off-limits to boys? Why is it so important to draw that line, that boys should be kept out of what is seen as the feminine universe?

    Posted by Sofia on October 23,2011 | 02:43 PM

    I have to say, I think the reason the stronger, brighter colour stuck for girls is because it marks girls are different. Blue is more common and appears more in nature than pink. Parents want to associate the stronger colour with girls so it is clear what things are for girls and, therefore, off limits to their little boys. In shows like power rangers, the girl is pink so she is marked even when wearing a mask. Also, a few years ago, pink for menswear was in, and was considered confident. It seems like boys in pink are decisive, and girls in pink are decisively different.

    Posted by Hayley on October 18,2011 | 03:42 PM

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