Why boys used to wear pink, and girls blue

close up photography a baby s left foot — Photo by Dominika Roseclay on Pexels.com

Many will be surprised to know that about one hundred years ago, boys used to wear pink and girls blue.

Now today, the idea of a man wearing pink has tongues wagging especially among conservative people.

But that was not always so.

First of all, in before the whole World War I thing children used to dress unisex colours because then they could reuse clothing. That was when fashion belonged to the higher classes who could afford a range.

Then a Ladies’ Home Journal article of 1918 changed all that when it decided on colour assignment.

Girls generally wore blue because it was considered pure and lacking in lust, as was the case with boys.

Blue was the color of the sky, heaven, and God, and it was a cool, water-like color, not hot or passionate.

And remember this was the time women would not be forward and generally wait to be courted.

Now here is the thing. Red was the colour associated with men, but it was difficult to achieve as it would get dyed down when washed. So it was settled on pink. But it was all based on passion and lust.

So what changed?

Well, come the 1940s and then it all went belly-up again, with manufacturers going the other way. This was because women were considered softer and then colour pink therefore more suitable.

It gets crazier. A generation later women’s liberation movements went unisex, before wait for it, the 1980s went back to pink for girls and blue for boys.

In all of this it is really a kind mess.

Which begs the question

Why do we have it so in Zimbabwe?

Colonisation is a big factor but because our cultural influences, thanks to the United States of America cannibalising the rest of the world’s traditions and replacing them with its own, wherever they went, Africans went. And in the case of Zimbabwe it was even more so as especially after 1980, music and TV was fundamentally as American as they come.

Add the multiple Pentacostal churches important and their extreme points of view, and here we are.

Meaning, there really is no reason why boys should wear blue, and girls pink. Unless one subscribes to US culture wars.