It starts the minute a baby is born....a pink blanket for a girl, a blue blanket for a boy. If you find out the sex of your baby before birth, it actually starts earlier....your baby shower will be a sea of pastel pinks or baby blues. Sometimes even the stuff you'd expect to use for more than one kid, like car seats and strollers, don't have a very "unisex"-looking option.
People really don't know what to do with themselves if you don't obey the "rule." Until my daughter was about two, she was bald as a cue ball. She also has gorgeous, huge blue eyes with very thick, long eyelashes, so I would dress her in a lot of blue to set them off. And we're not talking Detroit Lions jerseys and overalls, here....these were blue peasant shirts, flowered dresses, jackets trimmed with fake fur around the hood, etc. Invariably, some well-meaning, nice old lady would say, "Oh, he is a handsome one! What is his name?" When I had to answer with her (very female) first name, most of them would be nice and apologize, but a few would be all "but...but....she's in blue."
This was just kind of funny and annoying when she didn't get it, but once she did she'd get upset that they thought she was a boy. And then promptly refused to wear anything but pink and purple until she was about six years old.
And while you can find cute girls' clothes in blue, just try finding anything pink for a boy. Not gonna happen, ever. Some adult men (including my conservative, Republican 66-year-old dad) can rock a pink button-down, but boys will say no way. It's kind of sad, really, that kids won't wear colors they like because they're "boy" or "girl."
It wasn't always this way.
In this week's edition of "Your Kid Asked What?" the smart folks at Cafemom Studios delve into the history of colors for children. As it turns out, all children used to wear one color: White. It denoted children's innocence and purity and more to the point, it could be bleached when it inevitably got stained. Watch the video to learn the surprising history of the pink or blue symbolism.
See this video on The Stir by CafeMom.
Do you let your kids wear the "other" color?
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Image via Charlotte.Morral/Flickr