Why did those two stick vs other colours like red, green, or yellow? I did a bit of searching and apparently it used to be reversed where blue was for girls and pink was for boys. Why was it swapped? How many times did it swap? Was there ever a time where other colours represented men and women?
Was this association always the case, or is it a modern thing? During feudal times, I read that purple was a symbol of royalty because it was a rare/expensive dye, but did it also symbolise the union between the king and queen as well?
It probably isn’t too ancient since there aren’t many blue and pink things in the natural world besides flowers (but those come in all sorts of other colours too) and the blue sky (which isn’t associated with either men or women really)
No two colours have such a strong association with either men or women than blue and pink, which I think is really weird. What happened with yellow, red, green, etc.?
but why pink and blue? Are they cheaper to manufacture and mass produce or something?
If you read the wiki article department stores wanted to collaborate on colors. Most stores were doing all colors for babies, but it’s easier to mass produce one color per gender. There was a time where different stores were doing boys pink (because red is masculine, so pink is baby red) and girls in a feminine light blue. Eventually they settled on girl pink and boy blue. It was utterly arbitrary. Yellow was used for gender neutral.
It’s only recently with online shopping that we are getting back to being able to buy baby clothes in any color once again.
I mean, red and blue are 2 of the 3 primary colors in pigments, so that probably has something to do with it. Why yellow missed out, I have no idea.
Yellow sucks.
It’s associated with urine, and a baby in yellow just looks like a baby that’s pissed itself.