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Fox TV is in its typical swivet over a J. Crew catalog image of a mom painting her son’s toenails (gasp) pink.
“it may be fun and games now, Jenna,” frets Dr Keith Ablow, “but at least put some money aside for psychotherapy for the kid—and maybe a little for others who’ll be affected by your ‘innocent’ pleasure. This is a dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity—homogenizing males and females when the outcome of such ‘psychological sterilization’ [my word choice] is not known.”
Good junk phrase coinage, there, Keith: Psychological Sterilization. Zowie.
So anyone who reads my work and read CAMD knows that pink, when it was introduced in 1900, was for B*O*Y*S*, seen as a masculine version of red. Blue, which connoted faith, constancy and the Virgin Mary was for girls. Take a look at the old Disney movies–Cinderella, Alice, Wendy, Mary Poppins all wear blue. Michael, the littlest boy in Peter Pan, wears pink pjs. The switchover didn’t really kick in until well into the 1940s and the assumption that loving pink was somehow genetic to females and that girls must be steeped in it for the first five years of life didn’t start until the mid-1980s.
Meanwhile, check out this photo:
Cute, isn’t she? Pretty long hair. Lovely white skirt. Be-feathered hat. And those patent leather Mary Janes! What a sweet little girl!
Hold up. That’s the 32nd President of these United States–Franklin Delano Roosevelt–at age 2 1/2 in 1884. Isn’t he dreamy?
That’s how they dressed little boys then. And, please note FOX, not just the Democrats. In case Keith needs any more convincing, according to my kids, clothing and gender guru Jo Paoletti, there is a lovely photo of Michael Reagan, son of another POTUS and toxic conservative commentator, as a young’un dressed in an all-pink suit. And he’s not the son who grew up gay…..
More on the history of pink and blue at Jo’s blog, in CAMD and in this Smithsonian online piece (thanks to Scott Newstok for tipping me off to it!) And the inimitable Melanie Klein wrote this elegant post on the J. Crew photo on Feminist Fatale
Wondering if a nice cobalt blue will cause the same type of psychological sterilization?
I wouldn’t risk it if I were you. Do NOT, I repeat do NOT dress your daughter in blue. Who knows what would happen??????????
Hi Peggy
I did the other day at ebony’s request, denim jeans and a blue t-shirt. My neighbours son and another little boy were playing football next door, she popped her head over and the little boy said to my neighbours son look your friend, Is he a boy, No he replied that’s ebony. no it’s a boy he said. Ebony interrupts saying, no Im a tomboy. That silenced them.
No, I meant would the cobalt blue be harmful to my son.
Oh, well in that case, no problem. He’ll grow up all manly and hairy and homophobic, no worries……Just don’t let him touch a doll. Femininity is contagious…..
On her blog Jo writes that the $64,000 question she’s been asked has been, “What would a gay 5-year-old boy have done in 1884?”
Her reply: “My guess is: gay children still felt ‘different’ as they gained awareness of cultural norms and expectations.” That sense of difference, she adds, may have been delayed by a less polarized early childhood culture. For instance, a century ago, baby dolls were given to both boys and girls at their first Christmas or birthday. It may also have been more jarring for boys comfortable with the feminized “baby styles” to have that first hair cut and be “breeched” (swiitched over to pants). But who really knows?
Jo’s work is the coolest. I want to be her when I grow up.
heh. You crack me up, Peggy…and your writing style is sublime. (FDR photo an added bonus) Strongly feel the whole kerfluffle could use a dose of TrueChild.org research pointing to a solid fact sheet on gender, media & children: http://truechild.org/PageDisplay.asp?p1=6299
Makes some salient points on stereotypes in a handy dandy media ready short sheet!
LOVE IT!
No need to be me; I need you to be you!
I bought jeans in the boys’ department for my daughter when she was a toddler. Heaven help us.
Me too.
A bit off-topic, but I spent all day babysitting a one year old: I don’t even want to THINK about how hard it would have been to change a diaper if people had dressed their babies as tiny adults before the invention of snaps or elastic waistbands.
And velcro, Anne-Marie–my mom had to use diaper pins!!!
my first daughter is due in four weeks, and i’ve already bought her every blue “girl outfit” i could find. which is exactly three. hey, it’s a start!
You know, another Jo Paoletti gem is that children (male or female) with brown eyes were dressed in pink and children with blue eyes (male or female) were dressed in blue. That was certainly true for me–my mom dressed me nearly exclusively in blue as a girl because I was tow-headed and blue-eyed. Pink would’ve made me look ill. So there OUGHT to be more baby blue for girls…..
I wonder, have you noticed the upsurge of brown for girls? Brown is the new pink. Or the new black. Or perhaps the new yellow/green…..
i have seen a lot of brown- usually paired with pink (of course). i’ve also seen a lot of hot pink, paired with bright greens and teals, and some nice primary yellows and oranges, which are a nice departure from the pastel baby pink i see everywhere…
i like the “blue for blue eyes” idea. we’ll have to see what happens when she’s born.
What’s funny is that my parents had one of those oil portraits done of each of us kids when we were little–you know how they did in the 1960s (or maybe not). They painted them from black and white photos. So my oldest brother is probably 10 and I’m about 3, and I was wearing my favorite dress in the world which was blue with a white tulip on it. They painted it pink. My mother was FURIOUS about it because, as I said, I was blue-eyed so dressed in blue, but decided against making them redo the whole painting for that mistake. So there was an interesting moment where the pink/blue confusion was beginning to tip more towards pink. Anyway, whenever I see that painting I laugh because it forever feels “wrong.”
Or, wait, maybe Keith what’s-his-name is right and the fact that my decidedly traditional mom dressed me in blue is why I grew up to be a rabble-rousing feminist? Maybe she was subliminally grooming me for a different role? MAYBE SHE MADE ME INTO A BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!
Whatever happened to all the color theory we learning in 80s? I’m a Winter! I look best in jewel tones. Only Summers should wear pink…
I was thinking about that recently. That seems to have disappeared entirely. Again, I sometimes dressed Daisy in hot pink because it looked nice on her, but pale pink is horrible with her skin tone. I think that’s why RED is the color for girls in Asia. Looks much better on kids with that skin tone. And jewel tones. And black.
[...] of my great-grandparents, both born circa 1902, are identical and indistinguishable. Check out this photo of Franklin D. Roosevelt in [...]
I’m finding it repressively difficult not to rage against the conservative machine on this chosen outrage. Not only is the backlash agains the photo sexist, but also ignorant and disheartening.
As the mother of two young girls, ages 5 & 6, it’s getting harder with each passing month of their lives to instill in them a sense of worth. The social ‘norm’ they see in the very likable and entertaining Disney Princess movies is disheartening to women like myself who are trying to sway my girls against the life’s-focus-is-finding-a-man mentality.
I’m getting your book and reading it cover-to-cover. Thank you for your voice of reason.
Thank you, Angie. I hope you find it useful, or at least supportive. It’s clear from the success of the book that people are sick and tired of this, ready for this message, ready to start the conversation. And next the question is how to Make. It. Stop.
Absolutely ridiculous; the fervent *insistence* that girls stick with pink and boys stick with blue is hilarious to begin with, but this tidbit makes the whole hullabaloo even more knee-slapping. This is just another proof of the obvious: gender assignments are *invented*. They are socially constructed. Just take a look around the world; different cultures manifest gender roles in different ways. Clearly, it’s not something innate… if only we could get conservatives to open their front door. (Not likely.)
Here’s more on what I think about the J. Crew crisis: http://goddessblue.wordpress.com/2011/04/12/the-depravity-of-the-pedicure/
Anne of Austria and son
[...] *Our friend Peggy Orenstein writes a great post with an important history lesson here. [...]
George Washington!!!
I LOVE the photos in your recent posts, Peggy. Especially Roosevelt.
I’ve written two posts about how to contact J. Crew and tell them how awesome they are–here they are in case your readers want to do the same:
http://www.sarahhoffmanwriter.com/2011/04/thank-you-jenna-lyons/
http://www.sarahhoffmanwriter.com/2011/04/thank-you-jenna-lyons/
-Sarah Hoffman
Thank you SO much Sarah!! I’ll post on facebook, too. (crediting you)
[...] a girl gets sick for two days and the whole world erupts over a little boy in pink nail polish. In case you’ve also been living under a rock, Jon Stewart pretty much has the whole thing [...]
[...] Orenstein wrote a great piece called When Men Were Men and Girls Were Boys in reaction to the ridiculous J. Crew [...]
The last tsarina of Russia with her son, the tsarevitch, in 1906:
http://s81.photobucket.com/albums/j231/Alexei-7/?action=view¤t=1906a2ju.jpg
Again in 1906 (what a beautiful dress and those curls!)
http://s81.photobucket.com/albums/j231/Alexei-7/?action=view¤t=alexei1906.jpg
My grandfather used to wear a dress till he was three, and that was back in the 20′s.
By the way, I’ve been rewatching old episodes of Pipi Langstrumpf (the Swedish version). Those were the days when children wore colourful clothes (yellow, blue, red,…)
There are pictures of my dad, who was born in 1926, in a pink dress as an infant. I always thought that was some weird thing my grandmother did–like maybe she wanted a girl, or it was leftover from his sister (who was nine years older than he is and two other boys were born in between….). But after doing this work I realize Grandma was just dressing him the old fashioned way–a boy in a pink dress.
Where do you find Pipi in Swedish? And is it dubbed or subtitled or anything?
[...] When Men were Men and Boys were Girls: Hhahhahahahhahahhahah! This slays me every time [...]
I am an 11-year-old girl whose favorite color has always been blue. However, girls in my class get their eyebrows waxed EVERY week!!!
Thanks for being a rock in a sea of girly-girls!!!
Seriously? Who is paying for it? Who is taking them to the salon? Their moms? Why is an 11-year-old concerned about her eyebrows?
It’s hard, but worth it, to be your own person about these things, though. And Meanwhile, the challenge is, as you come more conscious of how the culture manipulates girls, not to scorn or put down other girls who seem less aware or more tied into it, not to let that culture divide girls against themselves….
[...] have long loved this old Peggy Orenstein post, and I’m tempted to reference it almost [...]