At birth, children are assigned colors. Pink for girls and blue for boys. This divides the children into binaries of blue and pink – feminine and masculine. The definitions of feminine and masculine change with each generation; however, the previous generation has always projected their idea of feminine and masculine on children, which leads to the production of hyper-masculinity and hype-femineity. These create toxic gender dynamics that are socially deteriorating and counter-productive in terms of gender.
Blue becomes the color for gardening and cars, and pink becomes the color for kitchen sets and makeup. A pink unicorn and a pink and purple kitchen set would mean a girl, and so would a pink frock. The colors of toys seen as ‘girl toys’ are pink, and those seen as ‘boy toys’ are blue. Interestingly, these toys are not the same; the category of both is instead divided into domestic and indoor versus action-oriented and outdoor.
This division is what the children grow up in, and later in life, they find it almost impossible to step into the other sphere of tasks, which are human tasks everyone should know. Girls then internalize their lack of ability to fix a car tire, and boys think they cannot cook even the primary food.
Parents should, therefore, stop associating particular colors with particular genders because it leads to typical boxing into a category. The question then arises: how will people differentiate between one gender and another if there is no difference in how they have been raised, in their activities, etc. Does there need to be a difference and a divide anyway?
This brings us to gender fluidity. If boxing has not been done into one side or another, a girl feels no different than a boy, except for their anatomical and biological differences. This would facilitate the fluidity of genders, and the communities that wish to not box themselves into categories and binaries can easily fit in.
Furthermore, In Pakistan, transgenders (the third gender category), adopt a dress code of vibrant colors which is much different from the traditional clothing. This shows how gender is now color coded. Historically, blue was for girls because of its dainty shade, and pink was for boys because it was a more robust color. However, this changed in the 19th Century. Girls were again associated with pink because it was a color closer to red, a romantic color. Romance was associated with emotion, so girls got pink assigned to them.
In the Chinese traditional culture, red is associated to boys because it symbolized good luck and prosperity and pink is associated to girls representing delicacy and purity. The obsession of the female being pure, and delicate is therefore reinforced through a color and a man who is delicate will then be called less masculine. This brings in the definition of masculinity and why it is so far away from being innately soft.
What we realize, at the end of the day, is that pink and blue connotates much more beyond just colors. It stands for gender expectations and gender binaries and the only way we can hope to move forward is to push against these limitations and stop reinforcing the same ideas – even through celebrations such as gender reveals which are only pink and blue.
