"Pink or blue? Which is intended for boys and which for girls? ... There has been a great diversity of opinion on this subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. 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."
-The Infants' Department: A Monthly Magazine of Merchandising Helps for the Infants' Wear Buyer, 1918
In other news, I somehow got sucked into that HowStuffWorks website. Specifically, the "How Men Work" and the "How Women Work" articles.
Srsly?
For me, since the articles mostly emphasized how men and women supposedly do and do not differ from one another, the big take-away was that the articles are less How Men And Women "Work," and more How Some Men and Women Might Differ From One Another (Or Then Again Might Not, Depending Upon Whether Certain Evolutionary Psychology Theories Are True And How Much Bell Curve Overlap Exists In Any Given Set Of Measured Characteristics That Are Nonetheless Usually Presented As Discrete Male and Female Traits).
But other than that, yeah, totally informative.
1 comment:
I was a teaching assistant for a class on the history of women and gender. One of the ways that the prof explained gender was by talking about how we gender color. And what you quoted at the beginning was one of her big points. After the students tried to argue that somehow pink was just what girls liked, as if it is somehow natural for them to like pink, she pointed out that less than 100 years ago no one would have said that. It was awesome.
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