Pink and the brain

Okay, first the photo at right. My sister Irene and me, circa some year I prefer not to reveal. I am about seven years old. The dress I am wearing, which came with a matching coat. It was a gift from my childless Aunt Phyllis and Uncle Jimmy who lived in the US who would frequently visit us bearing all sorts of goodies.

I still have the Ponytail ''My Treasures'' box Irene and I each got. For once I got the pink one, because it wasn't clothing, I guess. Ponytail was THE thing back then. I also had a hair curler box, a diary and an autograph book, none of which came in pink. (This is relevant, believe me.)

Anyway, about the dress. It was baby blue. Irene got a pink one, which made me crazy with jealousy. (I imagine she's not wearing it in the photo as she was a tomboy and probably got it dirty.) Irene always got the pink outfits while I got the blue ones. This was because, as was explained to me, I was the fair one and blue was more flattering while pink looked better with Irene's olive skin.

Yeah. Try convincing a seven year old with an answer like that.

My mania for pink continues today, as anybody who walks through much of my house soon learns.

Seems that little girls' are now obsessed with pink  -- as any modern parent can confirm. This, apparently, at least according to a couple of sisters in the UK who have launched PinkStinks.com. Here's The Guardian on their colour war.

For maybe the past decade or so, little girls have inhabited a universe that is, almost entirely,  pink. It is made up not just of pink princesses and fairies and ballerinas and fluffy bunnies, but of books, bikes, lunchboxes, board games, toy cookers, cash registers, even games consoles, all in shades of pink.

This Christmas is no exception. There is a pink globe, specially for girls. Scrabble has been repackaged in pink (the tiles on the front of the box spell FASHION). Monopoly has gone pink, with the dog, thimble and shoe pieces replaced by flip-flops, a handbag and a hairdryer, houses and hotels becoming boutiques and malls, and utilities turned into beauty salons. In at least one major supermarket chain you can now buy slices of bright pink ham, cut into heart shapes and called Fairy Hearts.

Something, plainly, has changed. "There's been," says Abi Moore, a 38-year-old freelance television producer, "a wholesale pinkification of girls. It's everywhere; you can't escape it. And it needs to change. It sells children a lie – that there's only one way to be a 'proper girl' – and it sets them on a journey, at a very, very early age. It's a signpost, telling them that beauty is more valued than brains; it limits horizons, and it restricts ambitions."

Oh come on. For real?

As the Guardian explains, it used to be that pink was  for boys, way back when. Blue was seen as more appropriate for girls, ''because of its associations, in art, with the Virgin Mary.''

It wasn't until after the second world war that the colour code was reversed. In 1948, as the author of an authoritative item in the Chicago Reader notes, "royal watchers reported that Princess Elizabeth was obviously expecting a boy, because a temporary nursery in Buckingham Palace was gaily decked out with blue satin bows".

Some claim the tide turned for innate biological reasons. Research into colour preferences in monkeys have apparently shown that females prefer warm colours such as pink or red, perhaps because the pink face of a baby primate brings out the mother's maternal instincts. A widely reported study at the University of Newcastle in 2007 asked 200 men and women to choose their preferred colour from rectangles on a computer screen. It found that women showed a distinct preference for reddish colours. The researchers speculated that the gender d ifferences may be genetically determined: "Evolution may have driven females to prefer reddish colours – red, ripe fruits, healthy, reddish faces".

But the study failed to take full account of cultural factors: the enormous combined impact, for example, of parental preference, peer pressure and, above all, consumer marketing.

Now I will not for a minute disagree that little girls are targeted by marketers in many more ways than boys. There's no doubt that, today, despite the fad for pink dress shirts some years ago, no guy would be in the pink, at least not clothing-wise. 

But should pink be such a concern to feminists? Does ''pinkification'' determine gender roles and careers, futures and psyches?

Why, though, does pointing this out, as Abi and Emma have done, strike such a raw nerve? "Guilt," says Sue Palmer, education writer and broadcaster and author of Toxic Childhood. "The obvious reaction is denial. When you don't buy into the whole competitive consumerist status quo, you have to be dealt with – and that's done by either bullying you or mocking you into submission: you're either mad, or a lesbian."

Commercial marketing, Palmer insists, is behind pinkification. "When you're two and a half or three,' she says, "you have two key instincts. The first is towards inclusion: the overpowering need to be part of the group. And at the same age, children become aware of gender. So there's this deep emotional need to be part of a group, and the group you want to be part of is your gender group – so that's how you capture them. Quite simply, the medium for catching girls is pink. The marketers have been at it, driving gender stereotypes, for 20 years; it's immensely insidious and it's mostly gone on under parents' radar."

The only reason our ''Proud Member of that Left-Wing Fringe Group called Women'' tees turned out black was because black is more flattering and goes with more colours. Based on the feedback, all of us define ourselves as feminist. Pink didn't screw us up.

After all, the colour has many positive associations. "In the pink'' is to be happy and healthy. ''Rose-coloured glasses'' denotes optimism, although perhaps naively so. The opposite? ''The blues.'' ''Black and blue.'' Okay, I am stretching it a bit. But I loved how Canada was always coloured pink on our classroom wall maps, and that public healthcare was ''a pinko'' concept, somewhat socialist but not quite ''Red.'' This is why I like to call our home and native land The Great Pink North.

The real problem is not pink, or lilac which is another little girl fave. It's the insidious way that corporations make girls become women wracked with with insecurity and self-loathing over body image -- and PinkStinks.com does recognize that.

It took a lot more than pink to convert us from the Our Bodies, Ourselves confident women of the feminist movement of the 1970s to a culture where botox and fake boobs have become a $15 billion a year industry.

As Ed Mayo of Co-operatives UK, former head of the National Consumer Council and co-author of Consumer Kids: How Big Business Is Grooming Our Children for Profit, tells The Guardian: "It's as if the women's movement had never existed.''

Being pretty in pink is the symptom, not the cause.

Comments

[skdadl]

Le Shocking! Schiaparelli!

Aging feminist here, but they're not taking my fuschia away from me. Hot pink 4evR!

All the reds have brain pop, I think. To me they speak of ranges of directness, honesty, and passion more immediately than the other primary colours do -- and omigod but this low dishonest decade could do with a little more direct honest passion.

[deBeauxOs]

"In at least one major supermarket chain you can now buy slices of bright pink ham, cut into heart shapes and called Fairy Hearts."

What stunned marketing genius thought girls want to eat 'Fairy Hearts'? That might even convert them to veganism on the spot.

[Eliza]

The problem I have is not that little girls get attached to pink, because I know most girls also go through a stage where they hate the colour, but the problem arises when little girls learn that what's pink is for them and they're supposed to like it and all the things that come in pink are associated with "feminine" things like cooking or shopping or mothering.

[Dianna Inkster]

Believe it or not, there is even a hot pink insulin pump:

http://www.medtronicdiabetes.com/products/insulinpumps/features/colors.html

If it helps sell girls on the technology, why not?

Maybe, MONOPOLY with a female bias will teach girls to count and think about investment at an early age.

[...pat.]

My mother gave my sister and I the bedroom she never had, but wished for. Pink ribbon wallpaper. Matching pink bureaus, a fluffy pink rug. Pink ruffled ballerina bedspreads, with matching pink ballerina curtains.
When I hit my teens and got my own bedroom, I did black and white. Sorry, never been a pink grrrrl. Wanted blue when I was a child. Now? Green. Black. And the occasional leopard print. Still can't wrap my head around pink. I know there's no reason for it (well, other than reading pseudo-psychology articles about how pink walls keep prisoners docile).

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

anyone remember Pink Euthymol?

vile stuff. turned me off pink at a young age ....

I knew there was something not quite right about pink, and then I discovered the political implications, and everything was confirmed .......

[mozo]

Considering the album Music from Big Pink are all the members of The Band transgendered?

[Jim M]

Pink is the colour of a fun memory to me because of the 15 minutes of pink fame I had when the record company my brother was working for back then decided to promote a new Fabulous Poodles album by renting a limo and two pink poodle costumes for me and bro to motorcade around Toronto, like pink PMs. We went to 1050 Chum Radio, Sam The Record Man, A&A on Yonge St, etc, to deliver the new album and bark like poodles, of course. I think the album was called "Think Pink" but the real Fabulous Poodles did record a song by that name at some point. Here she be: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk1EJugoPVg

[Shell]

I've always liked Pink. And Blue & Purple & Green. And I'm a feminist. When I had boys (in the 70's) I put them in all the colours of the rainbow - quite deliberately. I hated the beige/brown/pale blue restrictions on boys at that time. And yes, they even wore pink occasionally. But we were more into Primary colours. But I have to admit that I'm turning against Pink, with 2 pre-school grandaughters & numerous other small girls in my life. It seems to me that "Pinkification" (I love the word!) is far more insidious these days. The marketing is completely over-the-top! There are pink Cameras, pink SLEIGHS, pink tricycles, pink Drum Sets, pink EVERYTHING!! It is almost impossible to find any toys to buy for girls that are not PINK. And, as noted, even GAMES - I mean, come on - Pink Scrabble?! In addition, Much of the Pink is attached to the "Princessification" of girls. I refuse to buy one single more "Princess" accoutrement - tiaras, shoes, dresses, castles, jewellry, books, etc. etc.! So we are turning our girls into Pink Princesses - dainty, sweet, feminine, soft..... - waiting for their Prince to sweep them into happily-ever-after land. Uh-Uh! Nope. It's a marketing trend that will result in whipping girls & women back into the kitchens of the nation, I fear. Girls are having tea parties with pink princess barbies while they talk about their newest plastic Pink Jewelry. Not a good sign.
And it is not only affecting girls - especially little ones - whose entire gender identity is presented by the marketers as "PINK forever". Boys suffer from this Pinkification as well. I've been trying to find a "house" - a "dollhouse" if you like - for my 2 yo grandson, who likes people, pretend, mommies & daddies, etc. All the "dollhouses" are pink, pink PINK. What? Men are never going to live in a house, have a family in a house, be a Dad in a house? Not according to the toy industry & Marketers. Thank god I found a Red toy kitchen - my grandson gets that!

[Ashley]

All I can add is that in Japan pink is just as much a colour for girls and guys. When I first saw some of my male high school students in pink cardigans I made unfair assumptions about their sexuality. Now I know better.

One of my firends once asked a guy why he wore so much pink as in north America it was considered a girly colour.
He replied "well girls like pink, and I like girls. I wear pink so girls will like me."
hard to argue with that.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

and has anyone seen offices with pink lighting? supposed to be soothing ...

Esteemed and Beautiful Moderator, do you have one?

Pat Pet,

Once in a while, you come up with ... really sweet postings....

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

Well, Shell .....

M-R-N, Hey Johnnie Cope, Keith, Paul, Jim M, mozo (I suppose),

"Men are never going to live in a house, have a family in a house, be a Dad in a house? Not according to the toy industry & Marketers."

Remember what you liked playing with when you were little boys? Toy swords, toy guns, toy fighter aircraft? I remember that as did all my friends ...

Check out this short story .....

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0201031.txt

scroll down to four: The Green Man

and see this passage:

"As for his drawing his sword when he dropped behind and thought he was alone, well that's a matter of imagination. He was a romantic person who had dreamed of swords and run away to sea; and found himself in a service where he wasn't even allowed to wear a sword except about once in three years. He thought he was quite alone on the sands where he played as a boy. If you don't understand what he did, I can only say, like Stevenson, “you will never be a pirate.” Also you will never be a poet; and you have never been a boy.'"

we had to get a bit older before appreciating "house" etc.

Marketers do understand markets, even if they're a bit shaky on other areas.....