Thinking (too hard) About Pink

It is everywhere, and it follows everyone. Nobody really knows quite what it is, or how it came among us, but it is a constant presence in all of our lives, even those who give it little consideration. It divides cities, countries, families, and individuals, and it has been known to take lives. It is gender, and honestly, it's probably not the sinister force of malevolence I've made it out to be in these last few sentences. (Probably.) However, it is a powerful force nonetheless, and people know it and use it. Over the course of this blog, I'll be writing about some of the ways that marketers and others use the concept of gender to push their own ends, which for the purposes of this blog will usually involve getting money, as well as examples of when gendered items are just weird and unnecessary (which is pretty much all the time).

You really don't have to look very far to find oddly gendered products for sale, so I first took a look at the nearest and most convenient store I could find: the Penn State Bookstore in the HUB.

There it is, in the middle of the rows upon rows of blue, gray, black, and white shirts carefully arranged at the entrance of the Penn State Bookstore: a single rack of magenta T-shirts. How did it get here, and why? If you answered "breast cancer awareness", you're not entirely right. While the store does support the cause, these particular shirts make no mention of breast cancer research, and even though there are some issues with the marketing strategy (to be covered in a future post?), it is generally agreed that merchandise sold to support breast cancer awareness usually does a good job of conveying some actual awareness of breast cancer. These products are totally unmarked as such. Alternatively, if you answered "pink is the new official color of Penn State", you are, unfortunately, wrong. And, if your answer was "because pink is just a nice color!", why, you're absolutely right! Pink is an excellent color to wear! Why, just look at all these wonderful pink clothes:

...wait, what? See, this section of the store is where many of the more masculine clothing items are, and, as we all know, men can never be seen in such a feminine color, lest they lose all manhood and respect in the eyes of their peers. Conversely, products that women might use must be available in pink, so that their femininity is immediately obvious to their users and any onlookers:

Examples like these can be found in all sorts of stores on all sorts of products, even if there's no real reason why they should need to be differentiated at all. Now, obviously, there's a number of options available to women who aren't particularly fond of pink. And if someone who's not a woman decides they want to buy an entire pink outfit and wear it everywhere they go, there's really not much that can stop them. Still, in a world where even water bottles are colored according to the gender of the intended user, you have to wonder, what's up with the constant assignment of pink products to girls? And, for that matter, why is blue the main color that's given to boys? 

In fact, for much of history, it was pink that went to boys, and blue for girls. Also, many products, such as clothing for children, were considered "neutral" and thus not especially made for any gender in particular. Precisely why the switch happened is unclear, although plenty of theories exist, throwing blame on subjects from Eleanor Roosevelt to Adolf Hitler. Regardless, by the 1940s and 1950s, the color patterns of today were set, and now many people accept "pink for girls, blue for boys" without question. This is most defined in children, whose parents or guardians are usually the ones buying clothes for them; how often do you see a little boy in pink, or wearing a tiny dress? No matter what the child's preference in clothes is, parents will dress them in the way that they think is ideal, and this ideal is often rooted in the parents' perception of the child's gender.

Now, why are so many products split according to pink and blue? That is also unclear, but signs are pointing to "because money". The line of thinking goes that by differentiating their products, manufacturers can reach a greater consumer base and sell more products, and dividing according to gender lines is a simple method, since nearly everyone is considered either male or female and the split is roughly 50-50. Color, too, is just one of the easiest ways to make products appear different without having to put much effort into it, since it is easier to use alternate-colored materials than to redesign the entire product.

Ultimately, though, there is not much reason that the color of the clothes should matter to consumers. You can certainly choose to wear and use products of whatever color you want (even those neon green shirts that are also in the bookstore for some reason). Yet companies continue to market their products in pink for women, and people continue to pick their purchases depending on which color best fits their gender, not which color they really like, and parents continue to refuse to buy their sons pink clothes because "it'll make you look like a girl". Why does one color need to be such a big deal?