9 ms·
When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?
- ams6110 13y agoNever heard that dresses were gender-neutral for small children in the 19th century. Seems I've seen plenty of old photographs that show boys wearing traditionally "masculine" clothing, though commonly with short pants, transitioning to long pants during adolescence.
- dfc 13y agoI love the picture of FDR in a dress. http://media.smithsonianmag.com/images/pink-and-blue-Franklin-Roosevelt-2.jpg http://media.smithsonianmag.com/images/pink-and-blue-Frankli...
- GuiA 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeching_(boys) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeching_(boys)
- Retric 13y agoIt's hard to say if a 5 year old is a boy or girl withought clothing identifiers so it's not always obvious. However, from a practical standpoint a dress takes less effort to make, you don't outgrow them as fast, and it makes changing faster so I can see why it would be the gender neutral choice.
- paul_f 13y agoAs a Father of four, this makes a whole lot of sense to me. I'd guess they'd potty train faster in a dress than in pants.
- shirro 13y agoI don't know about potty training. Disposable nappies are a miracle of habituation. It seems they can deposit bucket loads in them and never know it - at least until they saturate and the dam bursts. Living in a climate that is warm to hot most of the year, little kids basically just need a nappy and a tshirt or singlet around the house. It looks very ghetto but it is practical and not unlike wearing a dress I guess. Chucking shorts on over the nappy to dress up for a public outing doesn't seem to alter the complexity of things appreciably. Little boy fire engines take great pride in being accessorised with a fire hose and whipping it out never seems to present any challenges or inhibitions to them. At least compared with aiming it. Perhaps we should paint a fly in the toilet bowl.
- zanny 13y agoBut why does it need to be obvious? Traditionally sexism led to people liking to flout their boys, but today I would hope we would be passed this (albeit pie in the sky thinking, we obviously aren't past whats in a kids nethers). I can't wait for the day people just don't give a crap if the 5 year old has a dick or not.
- nostromo 13y agoFor me it's the simple issue about knowing which gender pronoun to use. It seems rude to call someone's child "it."
- neeee 13y agoI think "they" is preferred over "it", and not rude at all.
- chipsy 13y agoWhen pronoun is unknown, "they" is the common choice. At queer conferences it is becoming the practice to include preferred pronouns on your name tag.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoI demand to be formally addressed as the Wizard of Speed and Time.
- nostromo 13y agoReally? That sounds worse to me... "How old are they?" "When did you have them?" "Are they a boy or a girl?" "They are adorable." I would probably just drop the pronoun completely. "How old?" "When did you give birth?" "Boy or girl?" "So adorable!"
- rdouble 13y agoIf you say "how old is they?" or "they is adorable" it will sound cooler, like you're speaking some sort of patois.
- ronnier 13y agoMy guess is that it was very rare but because of agendas, it'll be played up and mentioned to seem as though it was more common than it actually was. Just me guessing... knowing nothing about the subject.
- RodericDay 13y agoisn't this a nice example of healthy, unbiased skepticism? lmao. "agendas".
- CapitalistCartr 13y agoYes, you don't know. This isn't a matter of opinion or guessing; its a matter of established fact, with lots of written and photographic documentation. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan supposedly said: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." You add nothing to a rational discussion with nasty slander.
- auctiontheory 13y agoFantastic quote - I'm going to use that.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoWell, if we are playing that game, I think it was a plot to hide the fact that we were being invaded by a race of alien dwarves and having a common dress for everyone below a certain height was their method of avoiding detection... knowing nothing about the subject.
- nhebb 13y agoThey were common in early 20th century as well. I have photographs of both my grandfathers wearing them as small children.
- EliRivers 13y agoThe 19th century photographs of children you see are, as a general rule, the children of people wealthy enough to afford photographs of their children. The effect of this is two-fold; firstly, you're seeing a small segment of society, and secondly, because having a photograph taken is special, you're not seeing everyday clothing.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoOne practical aspect of the same clothes until age 6 is that kids grow so fast you need to re-use clothes. In the 18th and 19th century when having clothes made was much more expensive, and the number of children a family had was high, the re-use would have been essential. Any parent today who has had two kids of one sex and then the third comes along of the other sex finds they have a bunch of boxes of things that they don't want to use. We sought to keep our baby clothes especially and up to about age 3 clothes as neutral as possible for that reason.
- 1123581321 13y agoI find neutral clothing is not necessary because parents with older children are always handing down clothes of all colors. I would guess that having differently colored clothes means more are produced overall, but I think it is an acceptable price to pay for variety.
- mc32 13y agoWhile boys and girls wore "dresses" till about age 6 or 7, till they were breached[1], they carried gender markers --at least in the upper classes. The clothes were not interchanged. The styles were different and people of the time would be able to identify the gender. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeching_(boys) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeching_(boys)
- mjn 13y agoTwo differences, fwiw: 1. Boys more often had square collars. For example, if you look at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_children_of_Charles_I_of_England-painting_by_Sir_Anthony_van_Dyck_in_1637.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_children_of_Charl..., the girl on the left has a rounded collar, while the boy 2nd-from-left has a squared-off collar. 2. Boys sometimes wore bands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bands_(neckwear) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bands_(neckwear) ). Due to their frequent use of lace they often are perceived as feminine today, but were perceived as masculine at the time. You can sort of see that on Roosevelt in the linked article. Some clearer examples are visible in the Wikipedia gallery of unbreeched boys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeching_(boys)#Gallery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeching_(boys)#Gallery Source, unfortunately paywalled (and it's a very minor part of the article, so not necessarily worth digging up unless you're interested in the main article subject): http://www.jstor.org/stable/1923418 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1923418
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y agoIt would be nice to return to the times of gender-neutral clothing, and perhaps keep it that way until the child expresses a preference. After all, genitals don't determine gender, they determine sex.
- grkvlt 13y agoI don't expect offering children a preference is a particularly useful thing to do. In all except a tiny minority of cases (where the person has some form of mental illness, or possibly genetic abnormalities) gender and sex are equivalent. The abnormal cases are generally going to become apparent through behaviour anyway, and can be dealt with then.
- Tichy 13y agoThat gender discussion is so weird. It seems people who are concerned about being forced into a role because of their gender go to great lengths and mental acrobatics to define some kind of new genders. So they struggle and struggle to actually define new roles they can be confined to. Wouldn't it be easier to simply not worry about gender at all and simply use your sex in any way you please?
- derleth 13y ago> Wouldn't it be easier to simply not worry about gender at all and simply use your sex in any way you please? The people who do this fit into the box marked 'genderqueer'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genderqueer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genderqueer
- Tichy 13y agoI don't think so - just because you don't worry about gender boxes doesn't mean you want to live all kinds of gender roles.
- mjn 13y agoSide point, but I'd be careful about assuming historical children's clothing implies more gender-neutrality. It aligned with a different conception of gender and childhood, but still a very particular idea of gender roles. To admittedly simplify something that varied by time/place and was fairly complex, here's one take: all children wore "feminine" clothing at a young age, and were primarily cared for by women (mother or, for wealthier families, female nannies). Boys started wearing more "masculine" elements of clothing as they grew older, eventually "graduating" to trousers (sometimes via an intermediate period of shorts), which often coincided with social movement to the company of the male side of the household and the boy being considered a "young man". There are still some pretty strong normative gender roles there, with "feminine" clothing still associated with non-manliness, just organized along a somewhat different pattern and timeline.
- Zelphyr 13y agoNow I'm not colorblind but I do know the girl in that first picture isn't wearing pink and OHMYGODTHATSABOY...
- Dewie 13y agoIt is interesting that some social conservatives (or maybe just non-liberals?) care about consciously enforcing gender roles through clothing. This would seem to imply that they are similar in their beliefs with feminists when it comes to the nature/nurture question: that gender is enforced through culture. But this is usually thought of as a very liberal idea (or whatever I should call it). Pink as an effeminate color has always seemed kind of arbitrary to me. I just can't see how a color would have a specific gender.
- rustynails 13y agoI think you're missing something. I don't see anyone enforcing anything. What if people like differentiation? Your comments imply that it's bad. I come from a family with adopted siblings. My siblings are very similar to their biological parents, who were unknown to them (and all of us) until they were 20+. Let me put it another way... They don't just share similar genes in their "appearance". From where I sit, nurture plays very little in shaping a person in a benevolent environment. I have decades of case study around me to support that view. I also believe that part of human socialization is about mimicry. Why do most people wear jeans? Why do we bother with pleasant looking hair-styles? Why don't men wear dresses? These don't define who I am, and I believe have little influence on the way I think (to the best of my knowledge). If girls want to wear pink, it's not a bad thing, nor should it be seen as so.
- Dewie 13y ago> I don't see anyone enforcing anything. I was talking specifically about those who used clothing with that intent, not people who just go with what's fashionable and don't care much to or forth. > What if people like differentiation? I guess then that is what they like? > Your comments imply that it's bad. It does? I think enforcing gender roles is a generally a silly pursuit, since I believe more in nature than nurture (though as I've said it isn't always even the goal), and because I think that it can easily lead to a majority ("straight" gendered) suppressing a minority. When it comes to clothing, it's more of an interesting socio-historical thing to me, since I don't think it matters much one way or the other. > I come from a family with adopted siblings. My siblings are very similar to their biological parents, who were unknown to them (and all of us) until they were 20+. Let me put it another way... They don't just share similar genes in their "appearance". From where I sit, nurture plays very little in shaping a person in a benevolent environment. I have decades of case study around me to support that view. Ok. Hmm. Is this the part where I'm supposed to violently disagree with you? > If girls want to wear pink, it's not a bad thing, nor should it be seen as so. But I think that it's a bad thing? Ok.
- shirro 13y agoI am sure with higher infant mortality and bigger families there were massive cost savings in gender neutral clothes for small children. We have our first girl due. I went to the local semi-quality big chain store and a stack of nice pink onesies were on the rack for under $5 (AUD) each. I got them to the self-checkout and found they were all marked down to around $3 which is less than a large cup of coffee around here. So although we will reuse our huge supply of robot, dinosaur and truck outfits, colour coding her gender in public for the benefit of strangers isn't going to be a huge financial burden. More pissed off with the pink toy aisles. I can buy my boys a semi-decent quality kitchen to play Gordon Ramsey in for $110 AUD on special at the same store available in pastel pink only (all the kitchens stuff has pictures of girls on it and is pink - all designed by or for Americans I guess). A similar gender neutral product in the same store is available by online order only for nearly twice the price. So the boys have a pink kitchen because fuck it - boys cook and women haven't been trapped in a kitchen for decades.
- circa 13y agodo you not get the Victorias Secret catalog?
- bobwaycott 13y ago> Today’s color dictate wasn’t established until the 1940s, as a result of Americans’ preferences as interpreted by manufacturers and retailers. That is the bit of history I'd like to read far more about, from primary sources. Specifically to suss out whether manufacturers and retailers interpreted these color preferences or manufactured them. Also, it's annoying when sites inject links and other shit into copying and pasting a sentence from the article to quote it elsewhere.
- eeky 13y ago>manufacturers and retailers interpreted these color preferences or manufactured them. Interpreted. There isn't a monopoly on clothes manufacturing so if a trend emerges it was likely organic and driven by the consumer.
- pan69 13y agoRelated segment on QI: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f7urmRaRxY&t=2m12s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f7urmRaRxY&t=2m12s
- auctiontheory 13y agoIt's only within the last few Presidential election cycles that the Republicans have become "red" and the Democrats "blue," which is the opposite of what you might expect. What has "always" been true usually has very definite origins, sometimes quite recent.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoAm now just waiting for the GOP to adopt the red flag as a symbol and then the great circle of irony will be complete.
- harest 13y agoEveryone who is not colorblind perceives that there is a special emotion linked to a specific color. This applys to Children as well - they are not emotionless entitiys until the age of 6. They have thier favourite colors afore.
- vacri 13y agoWhy have young children’s clothing styles changed so dramatically? As opposed to all other demographic segments?
- emmelaich 13y agoMy information on why red/pink was associated with males is that red dye is more expensive. Thus the wearing of red is a status symbol. (Source: talk on Vikings at Jorvik Viking museum/village)