The Lead

Just when did pink become a girl's color?

Little Franklin Delano Roosevelt sits primly on a stool, his white skirt spread smoothly over his lap, his hands clasping a hat trimmed with a marabou feather. Shoulder-length hair and patent leather party shoes complete the ensemble.

We find the look unsettling today, yet social convention of 1884, when FDR was photographed at age 2 1/2, dictated that boys wore dresses until age 6 or 7, also the time of their first haircut. Franklin’s outfit was considered gender-neutral.
...
The march toward gender-specific clothes was neither linear nor rapid. Pink and blue arrived, along with other pastels, as colors for babies in the mid-19th century, yet the two colors were not promoted as gender signifiers until just before World War I—and even then, it took time for popular culture to sort things out.

For example, a Ladies’ Home Journal article in June 1918 said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. 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.” Other sources said blue was flattering for blonds, pink for brunettes; or blue was for blue-eyed babies, pink for brown-eyed babies, according to Paoletti.

Jo B. Paoletti, a historian at the University of Maryland is author of forthcoming book Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America.

Now that social conventions have solidified they create a ready platform for those seeking free advertising, for example, by picturing a boy in pink toenail polish. The rest is commentary.

Some are saying FDR may have been our first gay president.

Comments (9)

Efforts to assign "natural" significance to color are doomed. It is almost entirely a cultural artifact. To try to fix a color to something as culturally conditioned as gender -- well, that's an equation with two variables...

Posted by tobias haller | April 14, 2011 12:14 PM

My junior high: Don't wear green on Thursdays, it means you're queer. (Or was it Tuesdays?) It was terrible, because I had this wonderful green shirt. But as soon as I heard that, I never wore it on Thursday again.

My friends can tell you how well that worked out.

Posted by Josh Thomas | April 14, 2011 12:28 PM

Where and when I was in high school - early 1960's - it was don't wear pink and green together on Thursday. Sigh.

My mother was the one who told me about the blue for girls pink for boys convention. My first infant jacket and booties were crocheted in blue. And of course I have photos of my father in his goat-drawn cart wearing his sailor hat and skirts!

Posted by Lois Keen | April 14, 2011 1:00 PM

I don't find the pictures disturbing.

And the last line is throwing me completely for a loop. FDR was gay because he was wearing a dress? What?

Posted by Carolina Lugo | April 14, 2011 2:08 PM

Who is the "we" of the Smithsonian article who find the look of a toddler FDR "unsettling?" And why is the Episcopal Cafe heading "disturbing?" not "unsettling?" I grew up with framed baby pictures of my father in a dress (am I that old?) and that family christening gown (what was it called?) could only be called unisex today because every child in our family wore it from generation to generation regardless of sex. You couldn't tell what the sex of the child in it was.

Posted by deirdregood | April 14, 2011 2:19 PM

Wonder if it was hard to type with tongue planted so firmly in cheek...

Posted by Lory Garrett | April 14, 2011 3:03 PM

Lory. You're among those who noticed that my tongue was planted firmly in my cheek when I put this post together. As to your wondering, no it isn't hard to type with my tongue in my cheek. I am mocking conservatives who are saying a J. Crew ad showing a boy with pink toenail polish may have an effect on his sexual identity. My folks didn't cut my hair before I was one, and it didn't affect me one way or the other.

Posted by John B. Chilton | April 14, 2011 4:20 PM

And some devout Greek Orthodox do not cut the baby's hair until s/he is baptised...which might not be immediate. The child I knew was not baptised until he was walking which meant his hair was quite long.

Posted by deirdregood | April 15, 2011 12:24 PM

I find African dress completely liberated, if one can use that term, at least from gender straighjackets when it comes to colors or prints. You often see men and women wearing the same prints, the same colors, whether it is pale blue, or pink, or pastel green; whether it's made of broderie anglaise, or with intricate embroidery patterns. So I think the color-sex thing is definitely a western marketing invention.

Posted by Rita Wallace | April 15, 2011 7:51 PM

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