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.

Time for Post-Holiday Gendered Toy Balancing?

Miriam Axel-Lute — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:30:00 GMT

I never really understood people who wanted to go shopping right after the winter holidays, except maybe for the very thrifty stocking up on cheap wrapping paper for next year. But suddenly I find myself contemplating it.

I blame it on my fellow 'Derby blogger who wrote about recent research arguing that traditional "girl toys" discourage the development of problem solving skills useful in science and math: "The toys reported [by parents] as girls' favorites didn't teach anything specific, allowing, rather for imaginative play mostly related to childcare. Boys' reported favorite toys, on the other hand, encouraged action, learning of new things, use of reading and problem solving skills as well as imagination."

See, I keep thinking of that post now, because it's striking, after all the grandparents have weighed in with their prezzies, how heavy my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter's haul is on the tea sets and dolls. Now, I'm not complaining. It's not like anyone was on a mission to make her a little princess. The personalized map of her neighborhood made for her by her GIS-enabled uncle is awesome and all about the abstract thinking. The just-like-daddy's painters' jeans and the red leather jacket are anything but prissy. And she adores each instance of the dolls (some of which came from us) and tea sets and jewelry. I don't have a problem with anything she got (even the pretty sexist Richard Scarry classic What Do People Do All Day? because it's awesome in so many other ways and such a nostalgia trip for me). In fact, it's all pretty great.

But I'm nonetheless finding myself aware of the gaps, aware that intentionally or not, the balance of her new possessions is clearly on the "caring and nurturing" side over the "making things, using their hands and solving problems" side. This is leading me to fantasize about spending money I don't have on a tool set or TinkerToys or Montessori counting rods (or the Free to Be reissue).

I am, of course, probably overreacting and should just take a deep breath, let life return to normal, and keep my eyes on the garage sales. It's not like imaginative nuturing play will limit her ability to develop other skills. It's more that I'm concerned about her getting to the age of developing a gender identity, which isn't far off, and deciding that based on the evidence so far, these are girl toys and she should eschew the others. Any other parents of daughters feeling the same way? (Or, for that matter, parents of sons having the reciprocal problem?)

Photo by Doeth, via Flickr.

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Do Early Childhood Toy Preferences Encourage a Gender Gap in Education?

Strollerderby : gender identity

The Pink and Blue Project

Time for Post-Holiday Gendered Toy Balancing?

Do Early Childhood Toy Preferences Encourage a Gender Gap in Education?