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.

Dressing the Family Alike: Cheesy or Check It Out?

JeanneSager — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:44:00 GMT

The Beckhams show up in matching soccer kits. P. Diddy and the fam rock the boy band look together. Even the Jolie-Pitts, the family that's trying to rewrite the rules for doing things the "family way" has been snapped out and about in duplicate duds. But what about the rest of us?

Is imitation the best form of flattery when it's mom making baby look like mini me? I thought a run-down of celebrity families and their twinsets over at Stylelist stretched the definition of matching. Accusing Katie Holmes of dressing Suri in her likeness simply because Mom and baby are both wearing red? Poking at Reese because she and Ava are wearing shorts and tank tops? If that's the definition of matching, I'm committing a mini-me moment every day I dress my daughter in her blue winter coat and then throw on my own parka - a different style but the same color.

And let's face it, I'd hardly expect Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz to show up at a Galaxy game sporting a RedBulls jersey. Or wearing Landon Donovan's number. Even Stylelist has to bend the rules for Beckman, right?

But matching Mom and baby happens more often than you think out here in the real world. As a family portrait photographer, I get plenty of calls in the run-up to the holidays from families asking me to weigh in on their wardrobe choices. "We were thinking white shirts for everyone, jeans for the kids . . . does that sound OK?" And let's face it, we pick out our kids' clothes for the first seven years or so of their lives. Seeing as most of us pick out our own clothes too (Lawd help you if Mom is still buying your underwear), it's no wonder their taste seems uncannily similar to our own.

So what do you think, are you dressing a dead-ringer, or do you leave that to the stars?

Image: Getty

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Strollerderby : portraits

The Pink and Blue Project

Dressing the Family Alike: Cheesy or Check It Out?