Myth of Gender colours

If you take a closer look on older painting you will realize that blue was the colour for girls and pink was the colour for boys. Madonnas are depicted in blue dresses and little princes wear pink gowns. Pink is a lighter shade of red – once the colour of the emporer. It expressed the future power of the inherit.

The South Korean artist JeongMe Yoon shows in her photo project "The Pink & Blue Project" that this colour scheme has completly changed. Girls live on a pink planet and boys live on a blue planet. The artists documents the children with all their belongings. Alarmingly the colour selection of the children is very limited and reduced to only one colour set. This separation continues even for adults with "pink taxes" e.g. pink razors are more expensive than blue ones. 

The gender products are great for the sales of companies, because parents have to buy the same item two times, if they have a girl and a boy. Twenty years ago they only bought one uni-sex bike for all children. The kids learn from an early age on that blue is masculine and pink is feminine. Blue and pink mark their identity as boys or girls as well what is in particular feminine or masculine. The ads show boys fighting and girls cooking. These stereotypes are anchored in the subconsciousness.

Pippi Longstocking is one of my childhood heroines. She never wears pink or behaves as expected. It‘s up to us to find new role models and celebrate all shades of the rainbow.

Bild: JeongMe Yoon – The Pink & Blue Project (2005)