Backstory: Think you know pink? Think pink again!
Winter Fashion
Written by cjhammon in Books | Music | Art | Culture, Life in Yesterday's Clothes
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While the cat’s away, the mouse will play. My husband is out of the office and I’m having tea in his maternal grandmother’s Limoges china. But I’m working, honey…I’m working! It is possible to work while sipping tea.
Sometimes I seriously wonder whether I deserve to be called a grown up. I’m a ridiculous dreamer. I still love the idea of tea parties. (I’m having one in my office today.) And I still consider pink a favorite color, even though my twenty-something friends tell me that contemporary fashionistas don’t wear pink anymore.
Say what? It’s no secret that little girls today are still born and bred in a princess pink culture. I’m in no position to challenge the wisdom of that, but Peggy Orenstein does in her book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture.
Here’s the surprising thing: pink hasn’t always been associated with girls. That’s according to Jo B. Paoletti, a historian at the University of Maryland. In an interview with Smithsonian Magazine, she cites a 1918 article showing the early origins of pink and blue. It reads: “The generally accepted rule is pink is for the boys and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” (Uh huh. I knew that. That’s why I wear pink.) In the 1940s the gender color scheme reversed.
Out of concern for kids, there’s a serious pink rebellion afoot today. It isn’t the first time pink has been smacked down. During the mid 1960s, Paoletti said the women’s liberation movement promoted a unisex look that nearly removed pink from the lexicon of fashion. By the 1970s, you could hardly find pink for toddlers, not even on the pages of Sears & Roebuck’s catalog.
My favorite pink garment on this site is this little number, worn the Vintage Diva, Erica T.
1 comments
October 25, 2011 at 6:08 pm
pink still is something I love to see on abigail lea. she is a girly girl who loves her pink ribbons and bows. I do think that pink is also used to show the sex of your baby. with no hair it is one way to tell the sex of a child when dressed in pink. But sometimes even dressed in pink people would call a girl a pretty boy… how else are we to tell the sex of a baby without our pink and blue…