Pink or Blue?

Unisex Baby Blanket

 

Some family friends of ours are expecting their second child in a few months. I’m excited for them, not only because I love pregnancy, but because I get to make a baby blanket for them! The situation that I am having, they don’t want to know the sex of the child and don’t wish to know till the birth! So here I am, trying to make a blanket for a boy or girl… and I’m stuck on colors. We ended up going with a yellow, and a rainbow-ish yarn color, but it got me thinking about the history of boyish or girlish colors!

When you look up the history of colors, it wasn’t until after 1940’s that pink was a girl color, especially with the ‘Think Pink’ slogan that was designed for women to embrace their softer side. Before this, pink for decades was a boys color, as red was for men, for it was deemed to be a stronger color. Some critics have explained that blue has always been a women’s color as it is the softer color, even artists have portrayed The Virgin Mary wearing blue for years. Back in the 1880’s babies weren’t defined by their sex chosen color, most of the time white was the only thing they wore until they were past the accepted baby stage.

Even children in my preschool have trouble identifying what color are boys and girls colors. It was a pretty heated debate when that came out, as most wanted their favorite colors to be the colors associated with their sexes colors. They only thing that seemed to be the same choice was that pink was definitely a girly color because of Barbie, the princesses, and My Little Pony had these colors, but after that even blue was hard to pick!

Even yellow, when chosen as a middle color, was more of a nurturing color, bright like the sun, and warm as wheat fields, when asked by men is not usually a middle color. It seems the older the generations, at least when asking around here, that colors are more easily divided among the sex lines, but less so when you get to the younger generations. But, we choose yellow, and rainbow that has all the colors, and its turning out beautifully! Final thought, I didn’t choose white for a very important reason. As much as children are little balls of sunshine, giggling and beautiful, they spew spit up, puke and can have leaky diapers, leading to stained blankets. So yes white is so beautiful and works for both sexes, it tends to not stay white for long.