Explain to Minister Damares: when did girls start wearing pink?

“Boys wear blue and girls wear pink”. This sentence has become much commented on in recent days thanks to the Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights, Damares Alves. Despite being seen as just another nonsense by most people, the phrase from the Minister Damaris ends up raising a question to be considered: After all, when did pink become a color for girls and blue for boys?

History shows us that things were not always like this and, as in all types of culture, these definitions emerged over time, coming from a completely different reality and driven by consumerism.

boys in dresses

Anyone who sees today a photo of the young Franklin Delano Roosevelt, only 2 and a half years old, dated 1884, would certainly find some aspects of the image strange. The boy, the future 32nd President of the United States, is sitting on a wooden log, holding a feathered hat, long blond hair on his shoulders and a white dress. Yes, a dress. White. To understand the context of the photo, it is necessary to understand the historical context of the time.

In 1884, social convention dictated that boys should wear dresses up to 6 years of age, which would also be when they should have their primeiro haircut. That is, for the time, the photo was seen as absolutely normal and acceptable. So what changed?

Why do people nowadays need to know the sex of a baby or a child by looking at it face to face? This is a topic discussed in the book “Pink and Blue: Differentiating Girls from Boys in America”, by Jo B. Paoletti. How did we have such a drastic change in the way we dress children in our time? When did the pink team and the blue team start to appear?

Jo, who has been studying the history and meaning of children's clothes for 30 years, claims that for centuries they wore white until they were 6 years old:

“It's actually a story about what happened to the neutral style of clothing. What was once a matter of practicality has become a matter of 'Oh my God, if I dress my baby the wrong way, he's going to grow up perverted.

But all this change did not happen quickly or linearly. Colors began to come to children in the mid-19th century, but they still didn't determine anything about gender. Not until just before World War I, and even then it took a while for this concept to become popular.

Blue was once for girls and pink for boys

Unlike the idea advocated by the Minister Damaris, there was a time when boys were dressed in pink clothes and girls in blue clothes. In June 1918, the Children's Department earnshaw published that the rule was for boys to wear pink and girls to wear blue.

That's because, according to the same publication, pink would be a more decided and strong color, that is, it suits boys better. Meanwhile, blue would be a more delicate and whimsical color, which would suit girls better.

It's notable that even when the colors switch places, the definitions don't change that much. In 1927 the magazine Time published a booklet stating that blue was to be used on girls, and pink on boys, as well as the filene in Boston, the Best & Co. in New York, Halle in Cleveland and Marshall Field in Chicago.

The dictatorship of colors that was proposed by the Minister Damaris it only appeared in the mid-40s, as a result of a shopping preference in America, interpreted by the children's clothing stores and manufacturers of the time. In this way, children started to be raised with this idea that clothes should specify their gender in some way. Boys were dressed like their fathers and girls were dressed like their mothers.

fruit of consumerism

When the women's libertarian movement began to emerge in the 60s, history changed a bit. The women who began to fight for their rights, different from the time of Franklin Roosevelt, supported the idea that instead of being gender neutral, girls should be dressed like boys. This would be a way of showing them that they weren't stuck in the role of subservient women because of their delicate clothes. By dressing them like boys, they would feel less fragile and freer.

It was in mid-1985 that the neutral gender began to be definitively left aside and these impositions of differences began to become even more comprehensive than just clothing color. At that time, boys' rooms were not only decorated in blue, but teddy bears holding a soccer ball began to appear.

One of the big reasons for this arrival and this change in social convention about babies was the evolution of prenatal testing and the ability to find out sex before birth. In this way, parents already began to buy things for their future babies and the market has learned to take advantage of this in the best way. After all, the more individualized this purchase is, the more they will spend, right? And if by chance they had another child, they would have to spend it all over again, especially if the sex was different.

Even mothers who were raised before the 80s ended up embracing this type of consumption. Despite growing up in a culture that was gender-neutral or even dictated different values, they simply accepted that their daughters could be strong and independent, but still “feminine”, hence the pink.

And what is the impact on children?

This change in social convention also ends up having an impact on the children themselves and the way they see this whole situation. According to experts, children are not aware of their gender until they are between 3 or 4 years, that is, until that age it does not really matter to them whether they are girls or boys. And, it's not until about 6 or 7 years old that they understand that this is definitive.

However, nowadays, they are being subjected to advertisements and phrases such as Minister Damaris, who end up forcing these conventions on their heads. And so they start to believe, for example, that what makes someone feminine is having long hair and wearing a dress. And this becomes a new and unnecessary conflict when one of these children is simply not comfortable with what is imposed on him. Should parents let their children express themselves freely or should they hold them to what society makes them believe is right?

Minister Damares' unhappiness

As you can see, there are several historical and cultural proofs that show how much the phrase “Boys wear blue and girls wear pink” it's just an outdated inheritance. This knowledge is more accessible these days, and people are becoming more and more aware of how much they need to “break” certain social conventions.

The repercussion of the minister's sentence and the commotion it caused is living proof of that. Many of us now have the discernment to better assess issues like this, and our children are grateful.

Is that you? What did you think of the Minister's comment? Leave your opinion in the fields below.