Pink for girls and blue for boys is younger than your grandparents
A century ago a trade magazine told shops that pink was for boys. The colour code we treat as ancient only settled in the mid-20th century.
Walk into any shop selling baby clothes and the signal is clear: pink for girls, blue for boys. It feels timeless. It is not.
Before the code
Around 1900, babies and toddlers of both sexes were usually dressed in white, often in dresses. The practical reason is easy to appreciate: white cotton could be bleached hot and often. Boys commonly kept their dresses and long hair until about the age of six.
The 1918 surprise
Pastel colours for babies began appearing in the mid-19th century, but nobody agreed which was which. In June 1918, the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department told retailers that the generally accepted rule was pink for boys and blue for girls. The reasoning was that pink, being stronger, suited a boy, while blue, being more delicate and dainty, suited a girl. Other advice at the time suggested colours by hair or eye colour instead, such as blue for blondes and pink for brunettes.
Historian Jo Paoletti, who has studied this period closely, notes that US shops in the 1920s did not agree with each other either; some leading department stores advised pink for boys.
How it settled
The modern pairing seems to have hardened around the 1940s, as retailers and manufacturers pushed one clear rule that was easy to sell. That date is an interpretation of retail history rather than a single documented moment. In the late 1960s and 1970s, unisex clothing was fashionable and the colours faded in importance. From the mid-1980s they came back more intensely, which Paoletti connects to prenatal testing: parents who knew a baby’s sex in advance wanted to buy for it.
A friendly takeaway
None of this says people should dress children one way or another. It simply shows that a custom can feel ancient while being only a few generations old, which makes it a gentle, curious topic rather than a quarrel.
Bring it up
“In 1918 a trade magazine told shops that pink was the boys’ colour and blue the girls’, so our baby-colour rules are quite recent.”
Follow the thread
- RelatedAn 18-year-old’s failed medicine set off a fashion craze Another case where a colour’s social meaning turns out to be recent and surprising.
- RelatedDo skirts really get shorter when the economy booms? Another case where fashion looks like a natural law but is shaped by shifting social habits.
- Same patternHow trends spread, from royal courts to TikTok Shops, magazines and manufacturers helped turn a loose preference into an apparently fixed rule.
- Same patternCarrots used to be purple A familiar ‘natural’ colour that turns out to have a surprisingly recent, human-made history.
