My Children. My Opinions. My Tales.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Pink is my signature color.

I have always wondered what caused the gender distinction between boys and girls…and I don’t mean the obvious. I am talking about boys liking to play with cars and girls liking to play with dolls but also boys preferring blue and girls preferring pink. Is it the colors we present in their rooms or in their clothing? Is it that we buy them gender-specific toys?

I have an older brother and my mom thought it was a good idea to expose us both to dolls and trucks. Our rooms, however, did fall into gender-specific colors…His was red, white and blue with sports emblems and mine yellow and white check.

I loved to play with match box cars and transformers…in fact I used to love going next door to my twin boy friends house and play GI Joe. If I played with Barbie, she normally ended up in the mud in the back yard. Yes, I was a little bit of a tom-boy.

And while I try not to be gender-specific with my daughter, she is a little “princess” opposite of my tom-boy youth. She loves playing “Mommy” at day care (this typically takes place in the kitchen…obviously where I spend so much time.) She also plays mommy with her baby dolls (Twin baby brothers). But I guess to keep me on my toes, she does occasionally like to play with her trucks and cars too.

But don’t be mistaken, she is very clear about who she is. While drawing with chalk at day care she proudly stated…

“Look! It’s blue and pink. I like pink because I am a girl and girls like pink.”

No doubt that pink is her signature color!


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2 comments:

Jill said...

My daughter LOVED pink, LOVED IT...right up until I painted her entire room pink. Then she changed her favorite color to purple.

On the gender thing - don't know if it's true, but I once read that when they decided that "blue is for boys, pink is for girls", boys were given baby blue because it's the color of the sky, celestial, heavenly & all that. Girls were given pink, because it was pastel & boys already had the blue.

Carey said...

That is really a good way to look at it.

And I can see that, if I painted my daughter's room, she would have a new favorite color! LOL!