The Battle Over Pink

A common pattern among companies that traditionally sell more to men attempt to grow their female audience is that they introduce a woman's version that is pink. The ensuing conversations tend to go like this:

Pink PS3 Controller
(Source: The Problem with Pink: Girl Gamers and Marketing Missteps)

Person A: ::rolls eyes:: Pink?!?! Why does it have to be pink?

Person B: But my wife loves pink!

Person C: I love pink!

Person A: Pink is yucky!

Person D: Pink is a female color. All the females I know prefer it.

Person E: Hey, Person D, stop being sexist!

Person D: Don't attack me!

Person F: Yeah, that attack was uncalled for.

And so on and so forth.

So what's going on here and how can we break out of this argument cycle, especially since it never addresses what anyone participating in the conversation is saying.

Issue 1: Girls and Women Prefer Pink

The basis of this argument is that since pink is the color people in some parts of the world use to signify that an infant and/or child is a girl, that means that pink is the color they prefer. I would hope that the issues inherent in this argument are noticeable immediately.

First, baby girls don't get to choose what color represents them (heck, they don't get to choose their own gender anyway, it's assigned to them at birth). In places that participate in this gendering by color, they are swaddled in pink from the beginning.

Second, using color to signify an infant and young child's gender is a relatively recent phenomenom. According to this Smithsonian Magazine article, while pastels for babies were introduced in the mid-1800s, pink and blue weren't significantly used as gender signifiers until after World War I. To further complicate matters, not everyone agreed which color to use for a gender. Pink was considered by some to be a boys' color because of its relationship to red.

Third, we run into the issue that, well, it's unclear that pink is preferred by girls and women who are able to state their own preferences. For instance this survey of favorite color preferences of almost 2000 people showed that among those who identified as female, pink was actually the third favorite color (7% of respondents who identified as female), with blue (29%) and purple (27%) each getting around 4 times the respondents. Blue was favored by both the genders represented in the survey results.

Favorite colors by gender

Nothing here shows that girls and women would choose the color to represent themselves and rather the importance of the color likely has more to do with views on gender roles and the need by some to gender things instead.

Issue 2: Being Anti-Pink

While there isn't much to support pink as being the color girls and women as a group would choose to represent themselves, there are obviously individuals who love the color. For instance, let's say that the statistic that pink is the favorite color of 7% of women holds true for the larger population, that would translate to about 1 in every 14 women. Given that, it is likely that many people over the course of their lifetimes know multiple women for whom pink is their favorite color. This can help reinforce the signifier due to confirmation bias.

Being against the color also can reinforce misogyny in our culture even if it's intended to do the opposite. Many people rightly point out that forcing the color on people due to their gender is not a good thing but they might go too far to then believe that eradication of the color is best, reinforcing the belief that "girly" things are bad.

Issue 3: The Death of Gender Neutral

Another issue is the death of gender neutrality. Lost in this debate over pink and blue is the fact that the same culture that currently embraces those colors to signify gender used to use gender neutral clothing (particularly white) to clothe their infants and young children. Not only that, but children of all genders wore gowns. Much of this was practical, white was easily bleached, gowns made changing infants easier, and the clothes could be reused for other children without worry.

Lego Ad with Girl

Non-white clothing became more common with the advent of washing machines, specialized detergents, and stain-resistant clothing. Specifying one color for boys and another for girls also meant that many families could no longer reuse their clothing. The ability assign gender to an infant even before birth probably helped reinforce this gendering of babies.

Thoughts

Stepping back from these various issues, one thing to keep in mind that the larger issue is our desire to police gender through our consumption of things. The variety of tastes within a gender is always going to be wider than the differences we can point to between two genders. Thus, trying to say that a product is for girls and/or women through the use of a single color is always going to run into issues. Very few products in this world are for any one gender. Offering a variety of colors should be the norm. Saying that a particular color is being introduced to cater to a particular gender should stop. Allow a variety of expressions: masculine, feminine, and neither. Otherwise, I don't see an end to this particular fight.

I want to give a nod to Arin from Game Grumps for his unabashed love of pink.