Welham Girls' School

I absolutely adore the color pink but that does not seem to be a good enough reason for me to actively choose it, because every time that I do, I am looked down upon for making it my obvious choice as a girl. This is what complicates my relationship with this color and as it turns out I am not the only one. Pink is the second least favorite color in the world only following brown, makes sense. How did we get here? Well, I finally have the answers.

Nobody has a colour preference from birth. There is no point in assigning colours based on anybody's sex, another reason to discard the idea of gender reveal parties. Colour preferences emerge at a time when we are learning more about the world around us. This one is on us.

For most of the 18^th and 19^th centaury, all kids wore white gowns or dresses till the age of 7. When colours in clothes were widely available, there was no clear association of colours to gender identity. A June 1918 article in Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department publication, stated: “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being the more decided and strong colour, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” Sounds unusual, doesn’t it?

There’s really no dedicated logic behind the assignment of these colours to feminine and masculine qualities. In fact, if you look around the world colours can come to signify multiple meanings and rituals across cultures. For example, red in South Africa can stand for mourning, whereas in China red can be a harbinger of good luck. In Germany and France yellow can be a signifier of jealousy but in Japan yellow can be used for ‘bravery, wealth, and refinement.’

 

I was looked down upon for choosing pink as it seemed like a bold choice for me but someone may associate it with little girls and would never take me seriously. This is what bothers me. The fashion industry is the most dynamic industry in the whole market. The fact that it still sticks to a popularised marketing strategy from the 1980s is absurd and reflects our obsession with the idea of restraining gender identities. I think it is about time we discard the pointless traditional rules of gender expression. Colours are not masculine or feminine, they are what you think of them as, there are no rules to this.