Abstract
The first thing that happens to a newborn baby is that it is color-coded—pink if a girl, blue if a boy. For girls, in particular, this is just the beginning of an extensive color-coded gendering process. Since the early 2000s, girl advocates have openly criticized pink’s seductive pull on little girls. More recently, boys who wear pink have become subject to discussion. Tracing the metonymic relationship between color and femininity in the Western history of art, fashion, and marketing helps contextualize current anxieties about pink’s alleged power to feminize boys. It shows that the global circulation of color theories and actual paints and dyes since the sixteenth century, on one hand, and the “color revolution” in marketing and fashion of the early-to-mid twentieth century, on the other hand, paved the way for today’s gendered “affective economy” of pink.
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Notes
- 1.
See Christine R. Yano, Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek Across the Pacific (Durham, NC, 2013).
- 2.
Alison Lynch, “Prince George Shows Real Men Wear Pink as He Takes Charge at the Polo,” Metro, June 16, 2014, http://metro.co.uk/2014/06/16/prince-george-shows-real-men-wear-pink-as-he-takes-charge-at-the-polo-4763056/. See also Rebecca Pocklington, “Real Men Wear Pink! After Prince George Wears Pink Dungarees, More Celebrity Men Looking Rosy,” Mirror, June 15, 2014, http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/real-men-wear-pink-after-3700351; Sara Barns, “Pretty in Pink! Prince George Looks Adorable in Dungarees at the Polo,” Express, June 16, 2014, http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/style/482782/Prince-George-pink-dungarees.
- 3.
Regina Lee Blaszczyk, The Color Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2012). I am drawing on the concept of “affective economy” as developed by Sara Ahmed, “Affective Economies,” Social Text 22, no. 2 (2004): 121–39.
- 4.
David Batchelor, Chromophobia (London, 2000); Claire Bates, “Should We Not Dress Girls in Pink?,” BBC News Magazine, January 8, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7817496.stm; Daniela Bohde, Haut, Fleisch und Farbe—Körperlichkeit und Materialität in den Gemälde Tizians (Emsdetten, 2002); Jacqueline Lichtenstein, “Making Up Representation: The Risks of Femininity,” Representations 20 (1987): 77–87; Jacqueline Lichtenstein, The Eloquence of Color: Rhetoric and Painting in the French Classical Age (Berkeley, CA, 1993).
- 5.
Lichtenstein, “Making Up Representation,” 79.
- 6.
Ibid., 80.
- 7.
Ibid., 78.
- 8.
Charles Blanc, Grammaire des arts du dessin: Architecture, sculpture, peinture (Paris, 1867), 23; also Misook Song, Art Theories of Charles Blanc (Ann Arbor, 1984), 61–62.
- 9.
Charles Blanc, L’Art dans la parure et dans le vêtement (Paris, 1875); English translation: Charles Blanc, Art in Ornament and Dress (New York, 1877).
- 10.
Blanc, Art in Ornament and Dress, 67; Blanc, L’Art dans la parure et dans le vêtement, 90.
- 11.
Blanc, Art in Ornament and Dress, 67. On the infantilization and exotization of color, see also Michael Taussig, What Color Is the Sacred? (Chicago IL, 2009), 4.
- 12.
Blanc, Art in Ornament and Dress, 71.
- 13.
Anthony S. Travis, The Rainbow Makers: The Origins of the Synthetic Dyestuffs Industry in Western Europe (Bethlehem, PA, 1993).
- 14.
Blaszczyk, Color Revolution, 42.
- 15.
Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann, Die Kindheit (Frankfurt am Main, 1997); see also Weber-Kellermann, Der Kinder neue Kleider: 200 Jahre deutsche Kindermoden in ihrer sozialen Zeichensetzung (Frankfurt am Main, 1985).
- 16.
John Harvey, Men in Black (Chicago, IL, 1995); see also Anja Meyerrose, Herren im Anzug: Eine transatlantische Geschichte von Klassengesellschaften im Langen 19. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 2016).
- 17.
Robert Finlay, “Weaving the Rainbow: Visions of Color in World History,” Journal of World History 18, no. 4 (2007): 383–431.
- 18.
Philippe Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ, 1994), 102.
- 19.
Hippolyte Taine, Notes on England (New York, 1872), 23.
- 20.
Ibid., 42.
- 21.
Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 10–11.
- 22.
For example, Pittford’s Manual for Advertisers (Chicago, 1924), 153 and 124.
- 23.
Ibid., 124.
- 24.
Blaszczyk, Color Revolution.
- 25.
Daniel Starch, Principles of Advertising (Chicago, 1926), 579.
- 26.
Birren believed that color affected the most “primitive” level of human existence, while Danger focused on color’s influence on the “subconscious.” Both addressed some kind of base instincts, however. Faber Birren, Selling Color to People (New York, 1956), 159; Eric P. Danger, How to Use Color to Sell: A Cahners Management Guidebook (Boston, MA, 1968), 5; also Louis Cheskin, Business Without Gambling: How Successful Marketers Use Scientific Methods (New York, 1963), 245.
- 27.
Birren, Selling Color to People, 159. On Birren, see Wolfgang Saxon, “Obituary: Faber Birren, 88, Expert on Color,” New York Times, December 31, 1988, See also Blaszczyk, Color Revolution, 237.
- 28.
Danger, How to Use Color to Sell.
- 29.
Louis Cheskin, Color Guide for Marketing Media (New York, 1954), 15.
- 30.
Pittsford’s Manual for Advertisers (Chicago, 1924), 125.
- 31.
Howard Ketcham, Color Planning for Business and Industry (New York, 1958), 203. On Ketcham, see Blaszczyk, Color Revolution (Boston, 2012), 242–46.
- 32.
Ketcham, Color Planning for Business and Industry, 203; Cheskin, Color Guide for Marketing Media, 20; Alfred E. Clark, “Obituary: Louis Cheskin, 72, Studied Motivations and Effects of Color,” New York Times, October 10, 1981. See also Blaszczyk, Color Revolution, 236.
- 33.
W. O. Woodward and George A. Frederick, Selling Service with the Goods: An Analysis and Synthesis on the Planning, Designing, Construction and Installation of Window Displays (New York, 1921), 34.
- 34.
Birren, New Horizons in Color (New York, 1955), 116.
- 35.
Advertisements portrayed the consumer as an irrational “creature of suggestion” who was easily hypnotized by advertising; Ludy T. Benjamin, A Brief History of Modern Psychology (Malden, MA, 2007), 100–101. Excellent histories of the gender of consumption are Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture (New York, 1999); De Grazia, Irresistible Empire; Eva Illouz, Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (Berkeley CA, 1997).
- 36.
Karal Ann Marling, As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge, MA, 1994), 40. Brooks Brothers, for example, had been selling pink shirts for “Ivy League Men or Women” since 1949. See Marling, As Seen on TV, 173.
- 37.
Birren, New Horizons in Color, 127.
- 38.
Cheskin, Color Guide for Marketing Media, 20.
- 39.
Blaszczyk, Color Revolution, 236.
- 40.
Birren, Selling Color to People, 15.
- 41.
De Grazia, I rresistible Empire, 430.
- 42.
Ibid., 26.
- 43.
Brent Shannon, The Cut of His Coat (Athens OH, 2006), 44.
- 44.
Jo B. Paoletti, Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America (Bloomington, IN, 2012), 88.
- 45.
Jo B. Paoletti, “Dressing for Sexes,” n.d., at Midwife Archives, http://www.gentlebirth.org/archives/pinkblue.html; Jo B. Paoletti, “The Gendering of Infants’ and Toddlers’ Clothing in America,” in The Material Culture of Gender / The Gender of Material Culture, ed. Katharine Martinez and Kenneth L. Ames (Winterthur, 1997); Jo B. Paoletti, “Clothing and Gender in America: Children’s Fashions 1890–1920,” Signs 13, no. 1 (1987): 136–43. See also Diane N. Ruble et al., “Pink Frilly Dresses (PFD) and Early Gender Identity” Princeton Report on Knowledge: Pink 2, no. 2 (2010), http://www.princeton.edu/prok/issues/2-2/pink_frilly.xml; Jeanne Maglaty, “When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink? Every Generation Brings a New Definition of Masculinity and Femininity that Manifests Itself in Children’s Dress,” Smithsonian.com, April 7, 2011, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/.
- 46.
Paoletti, Pink and Blue, 85.
- 47.
Ibid., 89; Eva Heller, Wie Farben wirken: Farbpsychologie, Farbsymbolik, Kreative Farbgestaltung (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1999), 118; see also Ernest Biggs, Colour in Advertising (London, 1956).
- 48.
Dominique Grisard, “Rosige Haut, Blaues Blut, Pinkes Tutu: Eine Prinzessinnengeschichte in Farbe,” in “Als habe es die Frauen nicht gegeben”: Beiträge zur Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte, ed. Sabine Braunschweig (Zurich, 2014), 101–13; Grisard, “Rosarot und Himmelblau: Die Farbe süsser Beeren und des Himmels bei prächtigem Jagdwetter: Warum Mädchen Rosa lieben,” in Ich Mann: Du Frau: Feste Rollen seit Urzeiten?, ed. Brigitte Röder (Freiburg, 2014), 54–67.
- 49.
Marling, As Seen on TV, 24.
- 50.
Ibid., 34.
- 51.
Ibid., 38.
- 52.
Gay Pauley, “Originator of First Lady Pink Also Standardizes Our Colors,” Wilmington Sunday Star, August 30, 1953, 16; see also Marling, As Seen on TV, 38–40.
- 53.
Blaszczyk, Color Revolution, 276. Mamie Pink also contrasted starkly with the black-pink color combination popular with the 1950s youth subcultures that professed to emulate African-American and working-class fashion styles. See William Graebner, Coming of Age in Buffalo: Youth and Authority in the Postwar Era (Philadelphia, 1990), 57. See also Lucy Rollin, Twentieth-Century Teen Culture by the Decades: A Reference Guide (Westport, CT, 1999), 74.
- 54.
Marling, As Seen on TV, 40.
- 55.
Ibid., 43.
- 56.
The article concedes that these observations by parents have not been backed up by empirical research. Sandy W. Chiu. et al., “Sex-Dimorphic Color Preference in Children with Gender Identity Disorder: A Comparison to Clinical and Community Controls,” Sex Roles 55 (2006): 387.
- 57.
Jan Hoffman, “Boys Will be Boys? Not in These Families,” New York Times, June 11, 2011; Ruble et al., “Pink Frilly Dresses.”
- 58.
I by no means want to suggest that all parents embrace gender nonconforming boys. In fact, the sociologist Emily W. Kane’s research indicates that there are next to no worries about girls who act in ways that are perceived to be gender nonconforming, whereas many parents and particularly fathers tend to react negatively to boys liking pink frilly clothing, nail polish, make-up, and Barbie. They also discourage exhibiting “excessive emotionality,” which in their perception goes hand in hand with these material goods. Emily W. Kane, “‘No Way My Boys Are Going to Be like That!’ Parents’ Responses to Children’s Gender Nonconformity,” Gender and Society 20, no. 2 (April 2006), 160; Hoffman, “Boys Will be Boys?”
- 59.
On intimate publics, see Lauren Berlant, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture (Durham, NC, 2008), 10.
- 60.
To name but three: Diane Ehrensaft, Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-Nonconforming Children (New York, 2011); Lori Duron, Raising My Rainbow: Adventures in Raising a Slightly Effeminate, Possibly Gay, Totally Fabulous Son (New York, 2013), as well as blogs such as Pink is For Boys, https://pinkisforboys.wordpress.com.
- 61.
Cheryl Kilodavis, My Princess Boy (New York, London, and Toronto, 2009).
- 62.
In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association introduced the term “Gender Dysphoria” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5 (Washington, DC, 2013) to replace the diagnostic name Gender Identity Disorder (GID). Gender Dysphoria refers to the clinically significant distress associated with gender nonconformity, which is the marked difference between the individual’s expressed and experienced gender and the gender others would assign him or her.
- 63.
Hoffman, “Boys Will be Boys?”
- 64.
As Sahar Sadjadi suggests, parents and their prepubescent children increasingly seek hormone and other medical treatments to align the sex assigned at birth with the child’s gender identity and gender presentation; Sahar Sadjadi, “The Endocrinologist’s Office—Puberty Suppression: Saving Children from a Natural Disaster?,” Journal of Medical Humanities 34, no. 2 (2013): 255–60.
- 65.
Abbi Moore and Emma Moore, “Pinkstinks Mission Statement,” n.d., http://www.pinkstinks.co.uk.
- 66.
Sue Palmer, Toxic Childhood: How The Modern World is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do about It (London, 2006), 233.
- 67.
Sue Palmer, “Why Pink Makes Me See Red,” Daily Mail (2009), text available at http://www.suepalmer.co.uk/modern_childhood_articles_why_pink.php.
- 68.
Michael Gurian, Nurture the Nature: Understanding and Supporting Your Child’s Unique Core Personality (New York, 2007).
- 69.
Claire Bates, “Should We Not Dress Girls in Pink?,” BBC News Magazine, January 8, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7817496.stm.
- 70.
Peggy Orenstein, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture (New York, 2011), 184.
- 71.
It seems worth noting that while all authors in question worry about girls and their commodification, they focus on different age groups—Gurian on all ages, but especially 4-to-7-year-olds, Palmer on 3-to-8-year-old girls, and Orenstein on preteens and young adolescents. Orenstein, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, 7. See also Deborah L. Tolman et al., “Looking Good, Sounding Good: Femininity Ideology and Adolescent Girls’ Mental Health,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 30 (2006): 85–95; Deborah L. Tolman et al., “Girls’ Relationship Authenticity and Self-Esteem Across Adolescence,” Development Psychology 44, no. 3 (2008): 722–33.
- 72.
Ruth Barnes and Joanne B. Eicher, Dress and Gender: Making and Meaning in Cultural Contexts (New York, 1992), 1.
- 73.
Trousers in particular have long been associated with masculinity and mobility. The change from breeches to trousers symbolized a boy child’s rite of passage from a mama’s boy to a little man. Jo Paoletti, Pink and Blue, 42.
- 74.
After all, the dictum “seeing life through rose-colored glasses” implies a deception inherent in a rose-colored filter.
- 75.
On women’s culture of disappointment, see Lauren Berlant with Jay Prosser, “Life Writings and Intimate Publics: A Conversation with Lauren Berlant,” Biography 34, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 183.
- 76.
Ahmed, “Affective Economies”; see also Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York, 2004).
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Grisard, D. (2017). “Real Men Wear Pink”? A Gender History of Color. In: Blaszczyk, R., Spiekermann, U. (eds) Bright Modernity. Worlds of Consumption. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50745-3_4
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