Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America Hardcover – February 6, 2012

This is a great book for anyone horrified by current pink and blue extremes for boys and girls, or anyone just interested in fashion history. Highly readable, which is impressive for an academic. I liked it a lot.

This book was bought for a class project. Paoletti did a great job of describing the recent gender divide in color in the United States.

The author of this book is an academic but her book is very accessible to the layperson. In this intriguing work, Jo Paoletti uses a wide variety of sources to outline the evolution of gendered clothing for infants and young children in America.

For hundreds of years before the 18th century, Europeans & Americans uniformly dressed female and male babies and toddlers in identical ("non-gendered") clothing - namely long white dresses that were easy for mothers to sew themselves, that made diapering easy and laundering less damaging (white cloth could be repeatedly bleached with no ill effects), and that could be used by baby after baby. Parents at that time believed that accentuating the gender of babies in any way was inappropriate and inferred sexuality. Colors were gender neutral although pastel colors in general were considered appropriate for babies but if an association between a specific color & specific gender was required, it was usually boys with pink and girls with blue. By 1820, the long skirts for young children were getting shorter and pantalettes (loose pants with ruffles, lace, or other detailing worn under the dress or skirt) became common for both genders. Before 1850, it was hard for people to determine a child's gender just by looking at them but in the later 1800s, boys' clothing changed. They remained in skirts but the skirts became more "manly" - little costumes of sailors, Scottish highlanders or soldiers were common. Gradually, more parents began shifting male babies to pants when they were around 6 months of age. One factor impacting the popularity of pants was the increased availability and affordability of ready-made clothing. Another factor was the increased awareness of the desirability of activity and physical fitness for healthy children (esp. boys). The pants were made of more durable fabric, tended to be dark colors to hide dirt and were simple in design to provide optimal freedom of movement. A playground movement advocated rompers for both sexes to facilitate play. By 1905, male children's transition from skirts to the first pair of short pants and the 1st short haircut were considered the first step to manhood. During the 1920s, clothing became somewhat more gendered but neutral clothing remained popular during the Depression and during WWII so families could use hand-me-downs for their children regardless of gender. Beginning in the early 20th century, fashions and colors became symbols of gender identity. Certain colors that were once considered normal for any baby, now were delegated to females; pink was considered babyish so it was designated as only appropriate for girls. Manufacturers were happy to push gender colors because that decreased the likelihood that parents could use the same clothing for a new baby that had been used by the previous baby. In the 1960s-80s, the women's movement put forth stronger images of women and forcefully rejected sex stereotyping including the obligatory pink. Alas, there was a subsequent cultural backlash. By the mid 1980s pink became ubiquitous for girls ages 3-7 ,as it remains today (although there are some boys & men who dare to wear pink). Pink took a long time though to achieve this hegemony. From the time when it was first suggested that color could or should denote gender, more than a century passed before pink became exclusively for girls. One factor increasing the use of pink was prenatal testing. Knowing in advance the gender of a child allowed parents & grandparents & friends to focus clothing & other purchases according to the only thing they knew about the fetus - its gender. The emphasis on conservative gender roles and clothing coincided with the Reagan era and the defeat of the ERA. According to some theories, the children who had been raised with a unisex philosophy and unisex clothes may have rebelled against their parents and chosen differently for their own children. Young children, according to child psychologists, are uncertain of the permanence of their gender and are thus eager to affirm it. If parents allow children ages 3-7 to choose their own clothes (and that happens often these days) then they will go for pink for girls and blue for boys as they've been socialized to believe those colors affirm their gender. The author briefly discusses the possibility (likelihood?) that all of this doctrinaire emphasis on gender colors reflects a deep anxiety about homosexuality in American culture even as gay rights have become more acceptable. She also briefly discusses the trends affecting girls these days - besides the obvious pinkification, parents and children must also deal with princesses, and the sexualization of clothing.

Whether new parents; old parents; grandparents of just formally a girl or boy, "Pink and Blue" is a book that should be on your list to read; very soon. Pink and Blue is a truly great scholastic work for the everyday reader; much more than girls wear pink and boys wear blue (do you know why?).This book scans centuries of babies and the baby culture. It deals with unisex, nonsexist, homosexual and all kinds of differences in the world of babies over the first 7 years of life.Ever wonder what the affect of sexual related colors have on us as we grow up; and after? Any of you guys have the guts to dress in pink?("Tough guys were pink?")Has this simple idea of sexual color scheme affected our nation or individuality? A hundred years ago this was all reversed; so why the change? How did the 60's affect the baby culture? Jo Paoletti offers you many hours of fresh, fascinating exploration in the baby culture. Just how controlled are you over the color you wear even as adults or senior citizens? Think about that and then read about it in Pink and Blue.

I read this book for the same reason the author gives for writing it: I discovered that not very long ago, pink was considered a color for boys. This led to the discovery that the colors pink and blue were basically arbitrarily assigned. And now they have taken over.

This book outlines the history of baby and toddler dress in America over the last ~125 years. It is academic, but readable. The first chapter was a bit thick to get through but I was more interested after that. I found the diversity of sources - antique baby books, preserved children's clothing, manufacturers advertising materials - fascinating and useful. The author's analysis of the effect of various factors on what babies wear was also interesting and included aspects such as generational differences, women's liberation movement, and the recent availability of gender sonograms.