Pink and Blue

From: Linh

Right from the minute from when a child’s biological sex is known, the baby is thrown into either of two classifications: male or female, blue or pink. When the sex of the baby is known, there are many factors that go into planning depending on the sex of the baby like “gender” reveals, baby shower invitations, the nursery’s theme, clothes, and toys. All of these factors are gender roles that our society pushes on a baby that is not old enough to decide what gender they want to be associated as. Our society has pushed the idea that “blue is for boys and pink is for girls” onto us so much that it is the color that defines the child as it grows up.

The color pink and blue is one of the ways in which we create gendered segregation between children. When we associate pink with girls our whole lives and see a baby boy in a pink rocker chair, like in the picture, we become very confused. In the story “X: A Fabulous Child’s Story”, X is a genderless child who defies all scripts written for boys and girls. X became so popular that girls realized that pink dresses aren’t all that they had to wear so they gave it up to wear overalls instead of dresses. “Susie, who sat next to X in class, suddenly refused to wear pink dresses to school anymore. She insisted on wearing red-and-white checked overalls -just like X's overalls…” (Gould). Associating color with gender is from the effect of socialization of what is appropriate for males and females.

For my photo, I chose for the babies to wear gender-neutral clothes that did not contain any elements that parents usually dress their children in for you to know that their baby is indeed a boy like footballs and phrases like “mommy’s little hero”. By looking at this photo, it is actually not extremely easy to interpret if the children are actually boys or girls. The babies are not old enough to grow longer hair, so we cannot judge that the babies are male due to them having short hair. The babies are also way too young to have developed typical male attributes like facial hair or broad shoulders. We are so quick to determine if a baby is either a boy or a girl due to stereotypes associated with genders that when looking at this photo, it’ll be hard to tell.

My choice for putting the babies in pink rockers is to display that although pink is typically a girl’s color, there is nothing wrong with a boy using pink just like how there are girls who like blue. The shot of the picture also spaces the two babies within the frame but not far enough to see the area around the babies to purposely hide any factors around the room that would indicate the children as either boys or girls to let readers focus only on what is presented in front of them just like if they were to meet a new baby and cannot determine if it was male or female. The shot placed both babies on the sides of the photo and not in the center as homage to the phrase “the two cultures of childhood” which is about the division of children at an early age due to society determining which activities children take part in “are appropriate for which members of society” (Rudman, Glick 59).

We as future parents should refrain from participating in gendered segregation of children and raise them knowing that pink is not associated with girls and blue is not associated with boys so when they grow up they are able to experience both cultures of childhood.

Works Cited:


Rudman, Laurie A., and Peter Glick. The Social Psychology of Gender: How Power and Intimacy Shape Gender Relations, The Guilford Press, 2015, pp. 59–63.

Gould, Lois. X: A Fabulous Child's Story. Daughters Pub. Co, 1978.