Was pink always a girl's color?

Short answer

No, but it wasn't exactly the opposite either, as the popular story claims: in the nineteenth century, babies mostly dressed in white regardless of sex, and pink and blue becoming gender markers settled in slowly, unevenly, and inconsistently. Today's sharp divide became widespread in the middle of the twentieth century, and over the last ten years marketing has visibly reinforced it.

Babies in white dresses

In the Victorian era, meaning the second half of the 19th century, young children's clothing in middle-class families in America and Europe looked very different from today's. Social convention held that boys, too, wore dresses until about six or seven years old. The move to trousers was seen as a kind of rite of passage into growing up, known as "breeching."

In photographs from this period, it's often impossible to tell whether a baby is a girl or a boy from the baby's clothing. An article in Smithsonian magazine illustrates this with a photograph, taken in 1884, of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the future U.S. president: the small child sits in a white skirt, with hair grown to shoulder length, and patent-leather shoes. This was the fashionable look for a young boy in those years.

Pink and blue, along with other pastel shades, started to be favored as baby colors in the mid-19th century. But which one belonged to which sex hadn't yet been fixed.

The 1918 quotation and the "reversal" story

A quotation circulates widely online. In June 1918, a trade magazine for infants' wear retailers stated that the generally accepted rule was pink for the boy and blue for the girl, because pink was a more decided and stronger color, suited to the boy, while blue was more delicate and dainty, better suited to the girl.

Starting from this quotation, many books and articles went on to claim: colors were exactly reversed at the start of the 20th century, and they swapped back in the 1940s or 1950s. This story was repeated even in scientific publications as though it were a verified fact.

But the testimony of this period isn't unanimous. The November 14, 1927, issue of Time magazine, after reporting that a cradle was being prepared in pink — considered the "boy's color" — for a Belgian-born princess, asked major American department stores about it. Five stores said pink for the boy, four said blue for the boy, and one store suggested pink for both sexes. The magazine's conclusion was that there was no "great unanimity of opinion" on the matter in America.

How reliable are the frequently cited sources?

The source of the reversal story is usually given as the work of clothing historian Jo B. Paoletti. Yet in 2012, psychologist Marco Del Giudice noticed something interesting: Paoletti had never defended this story in her own writing. Her claim was more measured: at the start of the 20th century, the gender coding of pink and blue wasn't reversed but inconsistent, and today's convention only became dominant in the 1950s.

Del Giudice also showed that the evidence behind the story amounted to no more than a handful of quotations taken from magazines. How representative these quotations were of the period was unknown; some might reflect the deliberate choices of writers pushing back against the gender codes of their time, and a typesetting error couldn't be ruled out in others either. To test this, he searched Google Books' database of millions of books for eight expressions like "pink for girls" and "blue for boys" in American English books published between 1880 and 1980. Pink-blue expressions matched to a sex began appearing around 1890 and intensified after World War II. Every match he found fit today's convention: pink for the girl, blue for the boy. British English books showed the same pattern.

Source criticism shouldn't stop here either; this survey isn't the last word. Expressions found in books don't directly show what actually happened on store shelves or in homes. The safest conclusion is this: the evidence for a complete reversal is weak, but there is evidence of a period of confusion.

The code settles in, and marketing

In the mid-20th century, the pink-blue divide became firmly established in America. In the 1960s and 1970s, under the influence of the feminist movement, gender-neutral, "unisex" children's clothing rose to prominence for a while. According to Paoletti, the picture changed again in the mid-1980s: as learning a baby's sex before birth became common, families started buying sex-specific products before the birth, and manufacturers saw this as an opportunity. Paoletti's pithy line on this is: the more you can personalize the clothing, the more you can sell.

Example — "flesh-colored" pink

There's an interesting detail later in the 1918 quotation: the writer says that in later years the shade of pink "improved a great deal" and came closer to delicate "flesh tones." The color referred to here as "flesh" is the pink of a light-skinned baby; babies with other skin tones fall outside this description.

The same assumption shows up in another color code. The name of the light pink-beige crayon in children's crayon boxes was, for many years in the U.S., "Flesh." Crayola changed this crayon's name to "Peach" in 1962; the change is usually linked to the civil rights movement. Calling a color the "girl's color" or the "flesh color" shows whom the namer puts at the center.

Common misconception

Summary

1. In the 19th century, babies mostly dressed in white, and boys, too, wore dresses until about six or seven years old; once pink and blue became baby colors, which belonged to which sex wasn't yet fixed.
2. The story that "pink used to be the boys' color" rests on a few magazine quotations; even the historian cited as its source claims inconsistency, not reversal.
3. Today's sharp divide settled in during the middle of the 20th century, and after the 1980s, learning a baby's sex before birth and sex-specific product marketing reinforced it.

Test yourself

1. (Easy) Until what age did young boys wear dresses in the Victorian era?
2. (Easy) What conclusion did the 1927 store survey reach?
3. (Medium) What role did marketing play in spreading color-gender coding?
4. (Medium) What's the difference between Paoletti's own claim and the popular reversal story?
5. (Hard) Why does Del Giudice's book survey weaken the reversal story, yet why isn't it the last word?
6. (Hard) What does the example of pink called "flesh-colored" say about whose perspective color codes reflect?

Answers

1. Until about six or seven years old; the move to trousers was considered a rite of passage ("Babies in white dresses").
2. Opinion was divided; five stores suggested pink for the boy, four suggested blue for the boy, one suggested pink for both, and the magazine wrote that there was no unanimity ("The 1918 quotation and the 'reversal' story").
3. Marketing didn't create the code but sharpened it; once learning a baby's sex before birth became common in the 1980s, manufacturers saw more opportunity to sell with sex-specific products and reinforced the divide ("The code settles in, and marketing").
4. Paoletti says the code wasn't reversed but inconsistent, and today's convention only became dominant in the 1950s; the popular story claims a complete swap ("How reliable are the frequently cited sources?").
5. Because every match found across millions of books fit today's convention; but expressions in books don't directly show what actually happened in stores and homes ("How reliable are the frequently cited sources?").
6. Color names and codes reflect whose group the namer puts at the center; when a light-skinned baby's pink is called "flesh," other skin tones fall outside the description ("Example — 'flesh-colored' pink").

Sources

• Del Giudice, M., "The twentieth century reversal of pink-blue gender coding: a scientific urban legend?," Archives of Sexual Behavior 41(6): 1321–1323, 2012.
• Paoletti, J. B., Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America, Indiana University Press, 2012.
• Maglaty, J., "When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?," Smithsonian Magazine, April 7, 2011.

Next step

PS-03 carries this lesson's historical question into psychology: it explains, through ecological valence theory, where our favorite color comes from, why blue is such a widely popular favorite, and how object associations shape preference. PZ-04, in turn, looks at other codes produced by marketing: the category colors settled into milk, medicine, and cleaning products, and the risk of breaking that code.