The Pink and Blue Project

SunnyChanel — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 06:36:00 GMT

Pink and blue. Now those are some loaded colors. Put a baby in a blue or pink onesie and their sex is more than specified, it is considered an honest hued fact. The gender affiliation of these two shades has become a seemingly universal trend, with color conditioning occurring immediately out of the womb. It ain’t no wonder that many a young girl and/or boy affiliate with one of these clichéd colors as a major part of their emerging identity.

One woman was curious about this and also happened to have a camera and one hell on an eye. The New York photographer JeonMee Yoon’s daughter became fascinated by the color pink and at the age of five only wanted to dress and play with pink clothing and objects. This inspired The Pink and Blue Project by Yoon, a series of portraits of boys and girls with their own cherished collections of pink and blue objects. The portraits, in her own words, “also raises other issues, such as the relationship between gender and consumerism, urbanization, the globalization of consumerism and the new capitalism.”

It’s interesting to note that according to color historians, the affiliation of the colors was once reversed. Pink was for boys, being a variance of the “stronger” shade of red. And as the 1918 Ladies Home Journal stated “blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." The color conventions we now know only came into being in the 1950s.

Were you a "pink" girl or a "blue" boy or perhaps a "blue" girl or a "pink" boy?

Check out more photos from Yoon's series here.

Crayola Intros Kid-Named Colors

Kelly Mills — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:31:00 GMT

In case you hadn't heard, Crayola has slid in eight newly-named colors to the big box of crayons. Now if I were them, I'd spend my development money adding some structural reinforcement the black crayon, since its frequent use means it's the first one to break in half and force you to do outlines with that annoying little stubby crayon. Ahem. Anyhow, the new color names aren't as descriptive as you might hope, and I think the whole kid-named thing is a sham.

So, what kind of monikers do we have in the box now? "Super Happy (yellow), Fun in the Sun (orange), Giving Tree (green), Bear Hug (brown), Awesome (dusty pink), Happy Ever After (blue), Famous (hot pink) and Best Friends (purple)." Uh, yeah. Naturally some bloggers have had fun coming up with alternatives. But my beef is this: While Crayola says they developed the names with online input from kids, you know these aren't the names kids would actually develop if they had the chance. Yellow would be "Pee Pee Head", green would be "Troll Booger", brown would be "Pants Crap"...and so on. Just call me a realist.

Strollerderby : colors

The Pink and Blue Project

Crayola Intros Kid-Named Colors