Since our daughter Heloise Cerys Raquel came into the world just over three weeks ago, friends and family have been giving us various adorable baby girl outfits. And though we’ve had a few yellow, green, or pale blue items, the overwhelming percentage of blankets and onesies and dresses and shirts and pants we’ve received have been some shade of pink. In our unbiased opinion, Cerys looks marvelous in that color.
I’m often struck by the vehement hostility with which some folks react to pink. For some, it may be a purely aesthetic objection — they just don’t like the shade. For others, it’s the modern association with “traditional” femininity. (As most fashion scholars will tell you, less than a century ago, pink was considered a masculine shade.) Plenty of young women who were both swathed in pink and in sexism as little girls associate pink with the straitjacket of misogynistic cultural expectations. In the minds of some, a young woman’s fondness for rose almost becomes a litmus test for her willingness to live within conventional gender roles. Anyone who has worked with groups of junior high school girls, for example, will know that a mere discussion of the color can lead to rowdy — and occasionally serious — disagreements. I’ve worked with many a gal who went through an “I hate pink” stage; the objections tended to be more political than aesthetic. As they age, most drop all but aesthetic objections to the color. Still, even among adults, I sometimes encounter flashes of genuine hostility to the shade. And I have been asked, more than once, if my wife and I intended to dress Cerys in pink.
Of course, as my friends and students know, I wear pink often. My favorite off-the-rack shirt store is Thomas Pink, though I have green and blue items from that merchant as well. I’ve been wearing pink for more than 25 years, since my high school days in the preppy culture of the early 1980s. I like how the color looks on me, of course, but I also like the subversiveness of the choice to wear it so often. Though pink has waxed and waned as a fashion for men in the past quarter century, I’ve always had pink shirts (polos and long sleeves) as key elements of my wardrobe. And I’ve long enjoyed flouting the convention, common in at least some circles, that pink is an unserious and even de-masculinizing choice for a man to wear.
Pink on a man can mean many things, of course. It can mean “preppiness”, or it can mean a comfort with androgyny. It can even, I’ve been told, be a symbol of a strange kind of classism. One of my exes who didn’t like the color once remarked that she thought that only wealthy (or aspiring-to-be wealthy) men wore pink; her theory was that pink is normally “read” as a feminine color. Therefore, only a man confident of his affluence and of his cultural power would dare to signify his comfort with something so feminizing. “WASPs can afford to wear pink because they don’t need to project obvious masculinity”, she said (or something like that.) She postulated that preppy WASPs know that they already have the culture behind them, protecting them, and therefore they send a certain message about their own power with that willingness to wear the shade. She compared it to the captain of the football team dressing up as a cheerleader for laughs; he can do it because he is such a hyper-masculine icon that he knows no one will seriously dare question his manhood. Someone with less status can’t do it as easily. Or so her theory went. I didn’t think much of it, but I’ve run into others who share similar views.
Anyhow, I love pink — both the soft pastel and the vibrant, aggressive, Miami Beach-on-Easter-Sunday variety. And my daughter, who will grow up with some very strong feminist parents, will grow up with plenty of examples of tough, athletic, and ambitious women. But until such time as she starts making her own clothing preferences known, we will swath her in various shades of rose.
Hugo, if you have a son, would you just as happily put him in his sister’s pink hand-me-downs? If so then I think you can ignore the criticism. Pink isn’t a neutral color for the reasons you note, so people who don’t know you well are probably thinking that you are making a statement with it.
Like father, like son, for sure, when and if Hugocito arrives.
As long as you understand that you are targeting her for programming from everyone else around her, who associate a baby/toddler/small girl swathed in pink with the most die-hard of feminine stereotypes and will subsequently coo, overcoddle and otherwise emphasize to her impressionable mind (a) how pretty and sweet she is! and (b) how those traits are clearly far and away the most important things about her in the eyes of everyone other than her parents.
But that leaves the opposite problem, Lisa — avoiding a color we happen to like (as I make clear, for men as well as women) merely out of a reflexive dislike of the social rules associated with it. Better to subvert it, the way many women’s basketball teams this month have subverted it by having strong and sweaty athletes play in various shades of pink (for breast cancer awareness).
I don’t suggest you avoid it–I suggest you don’t put her in pink any more often than you put her in any other color–the best way to “subvert” it is to treat it exactly the same as any other attractive color, allowing none to predominate her wardrobe. Well, I’m not actually “suggesting” you do anything ’cause she’s your kid and what you dress her in is out of my purview.
I’m simply passing on info that I have gained from being a girl all my life and the differing ways people treated me when I was small depending on what I wore, and what ideas I internalized based upon that about myself and what was important about me.
I hear that. And of course, you’re right in that there is a difference between my adult choice to wear pink as a man (which is subversive, in a way) and our putting pink on her. Part of it is that almost all the lovely clothes we’ve been given for her are pink; part of it is that we like pink. But you’re right, Lisa, in that others will begin to behave in a certain way when they see her in pink,and that those ways include some very traditional gender responses.
Problematic all ’round, I suppose.
As a new dad of a baby girl — we didn’t tell anyone the sex of the baby before she was born because we wanted options other than pink to be in her wardrobe (i.e., had they known, everyone would have bought us pink baby clothes).
Interestingly, if we don’t dress her in pink, people think she is a boy. Pink is apparently the ONLY color girl babies are allowed to wear, if the garment is unisex (i.e., not a dress or skirt or frilly).
She looks great in pink, btw. We don’t avoid it, but we do dress her in other colors too.
I haven’t recently been shopping for a little girl, but here’s my question:
Why is it that almost all the lovely clothes you’ve been given are pink?
Is it because your friends and family know that you like pink?
Or is it because that’s the colour your friends and family thinks is most appropriate for a little girl?
Or is it because most of the clothes available for little girls is pink?
Rivikah, I suspect that it’s all three — and perhaps I should start asking. A number of close friends have said “She’s going to love pink just like her Daddy”, but others who have given us gifts are, say, clients of my wife — folks who have no idea about my love of the color.
And when you shop for baby clothes and you have a kneejerk hostility to beige and white (which I do), pink tends to be a very common default option for girls. I have no objection to blue or red or yellow or green, but don’t love the white.
We asked not to be given any clothes or gifts before the baby was born — one of those old “bad luck until she’s actually here” things, and of course, we didn’t find out the sex until birth.
The second and third possibilities have me cringing and saying “ew”.
Anyway, at least one of the differences I see between your choice to wear pink yourself and your choice to dress your daughter in pink is one of options.
I suspect that, when looking for men’s clothing, you have to go out of your way to find something in pink.
When looking for little girls’ clothing, you may have to go out of your way to find something not pink.
Perhaps, when Cerys (are you preferring her middle name?) is suited up in pink, all three of you could wear pink, as sort of a happy medium — that is, if you don’t find all wearing the same color simultaneously as too “precious.”
Good luck in finding something not in pink for a little girl. Pink is the pervasive color in everything girly – clothing, decor, toys (think Disney princess). When we were remodeling my daughter’s room at age 5, she chose a pink chandelier and pink walls. Now at age 8, she’s sick of the color.
Put her in a Palermo jersey. Now that’s pink done right.
I suspected that there would be a post on pink…
There’s a way to validate both your aesthetic sense and your desire to signal noncompliance with the societal norm.
Put her in a pink onesie emblazoned with “Fuck the Patriarchy”.
Problem(s) solved!
We will call her Cerys much of the time, bmmg39. And my wife doesn’t generally like pink on herself, for aesthetic reasons, much as she’s not fond of earth tones either. (Though she has a few smashing pink outfits.)
It’s a thought, Robert, it’s a thought.
If I had a little girl, I’d mess with the minds of the masses in my own way. I’d put her in the value-but-not-hue-inverse of pink–the very darkest maroon, almost black. I would, except for one thing–the poor kid would probably cook alive the minute the sun comes out.
I think all 3 or however many of you wearing pink together is a neat idea–not all the time, just often enough to shake some people up.
The nice thing about babies is that the clothing is all the same. It’s not like you can’t put a “boy” onesie on a girl or vice versa. My son wore a lot of pink baby clothes – damned if I was going to waste perfectly good hand-me-downs because some bozos thought it might give him TEH GAY.
How about pink baby clothes with a boy’s name stitched on them?
Meh, that stuff tends to be itchy…
I told everyone that we’re not going to do pink in our house … the nursery is set up in crayon colors, with bees, bugs, and butterflies as a garden-related theme, the swings we have are blue ocean swings, and the bouncer, well, we found that for $5 in a thrift store–that’s the only pink thing she uses.
Yes, I agree with Lisa KS that pink is a cultural construct and, no matter what its history, currently marks a little girl with the destiny of a delicate Disney fairy princess (yech!) or midriff-baring Barbie in her beach convertible (double yech!). Whenever my baby wears anything but pink (we have an adorable brown fleece hoodie for her with blue owls on it, over brown pants with blue and yellow flowers), everybody inquires about our “little boy.” Pink means you’ve got a delicate flower at your hands that requires 24/7 protection until she’s 80; anything else means you’re raising your daughter to be a culturally offensive commie homo-loving son-of-a-gun (sorry, couldn’t help quoting Sean Penn). I’m choosing the latter, mixed with a few shades of pink for good measure, since there seems to be no middle ground.
Now, pink for breast cancer awareness is a whole other issue. I believe it’s a reframing and a re-appropriation of this cultural construct, just like a woman calling another one “bitch” or an African-American person using the n-word when referring to another African-American person. When used for breast cancer awareness, pink becomes the color of strength and courage under pressure. But that and baby clothes are two contexts that couldn’t be further from each other.
“Whenever my baby wears anything but pink (we have an adorable brown fleece hoodie for her with blue owls on it, over brown pants with blue and yellow flowers), everybody inquires about our ‘little boy.’”
What follows next in the conversation when they ask this?
I’m not sure it matters terribly much for a newborn – no reason not to dress her in all the lovely gifts you’ve received. But I think you might reconsider her wardrobe as she becomes a toddler. As others have mentioned, the colour in which you dress her will largely determine how other people react to her; if you don’t want her treated like a fragile, delicate little princess and constantly fed messages about how her physical appearance is the only valuable attribute that she possesses, you might want to (at least on non-formal occasions) put her in practical, unisex, non-pink playclothes. And get pictures of her in them (when she’s older and looks back at the baby pictures, you’ll want her to get the message that you thought she was adorable and interesting even when not dolled up in pink and frills).