Color Between The Lines

     Pink is for girls. Blue is for boys. A fact as simple as - The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. A fact very much annoying to me and I guess to a lot of other people. No, I do not mean the fact about the sun. If I dressed my little boy SJ in pink it sure would be considered way out of norm by many people. And considering what others would say I would think twice before I did. Or at least I would hesitate to post a picture in a social networking site, showing off  SJ pretty in pink. Ha! When were these coloring rules set? Have little girls always been dressed in pink since the beginning of time? Who drew the line? Isn't blue a cuter and calmer color and therefore, may be more apt for girls?   Who says a cute onesie in "baby" blue should be just for boys? And lo, arose the researcher in me. And I spent a few minutes trying to find answers. Pretty soon I found out that this was a relatively new convention as late as the 1910s until when the color of choice for boys was pink! Yes, pink! I found an article with excerpts from books, revealing the history of gender based color preferences*. And who knew, even Nazi Germany played a part in this according to a book titled Gender Specific Colors**. By now I had attained enough enlightenment and laid this issue to rest, imagining  SJ in the early1900s  in robes of deep violet and blaring pink.
     My mom, an avid story teller, engages SJ every single day. She comes up with interesting stories, some that I've heard before and some entirely new. She goes about the stories creating new characters, giving them names and homes and that too so vivid, that they seem very real to all of us. However, we don't really know what my son thinks of them....yet! And one such character is a cat named Ginny. A cute little female cat who is a figment of my mom's imagination is supposedly SJ's friend in the story. Yes, a little along the lines of Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear, though my mom has never heard of them both***. Not only does it bring out squeals of laughter from SJ, little Ginny made us all fall in love with her.  And that is where this whole story starts.
     SJ has a bunch of animal toys,  with their own names and voices. Shorty the giraffe, Lumpy the elephant and Speedy the turtle, are a few from the entourage.  However he does not have a cat. Yes, a cute little female cat is missing! And my mom is adamant that I get him one. And so the search began. We have looked at a few places, but none of the cats really resembled Ginny. Even Ikea® had half a dozen cute stuffed rats and mice but not one cute kitty cat.  The quest continued until I went to Carters® one afternoon. I picked up a few clothes, and asked the sales lady if they had any cats. She saw the clothes in my hand and asked if the cat was for a boy. Yes, I said out aloud, and what does it matter if its for a boy, I need a cat, I thought silently. She pointed towards some toys, the ones that come with rings and showed me a cat apologetically. The cutest I've seen in a while. It had a pretty pink body and a green dress with cute little polka dots. Hello, Ginny! But the sales lady decided  I would not take it, since it was in pink. I picked it up, smiled at her and took it with me to pay for it. I came home and showed it to SJ. He gave it one huge bare gurgling smile and no, he did not care one bit that it was pink! Amen!

*, ** According to the article by Jo B. Paoletti and Carol Kregloh with excerpts from Men and Women: Dressing the Part, (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989) and The Children's Department by Claudia Brush Kidwell and Valerie Steele, ed

** Also from the same article "Catholic traditions in Germany and neighboring countries reverse the current color coding, because of the strong association of blue with the Virgin Mary...the NAZIs in their concentration camps use a pink triangle to identify homosexuals. (The yellow star of David is the best known symbol, used of course to identify Jews. The German system was quite complicated, using various symbols an colors to identify criminals, political prisinors, an a whole range of other groups). The NAZI's choice of pink suggests that it by the 1930s was a color that in Germany had become associate with girls." - "Gender Specific Colors"

*** Fictional bear created by A. A. Milne featured in all his works