Our culture is full of gender stereotypes. One of which is an association of the color pink with baby girls and "baby blue" with infant males. This hasn't always been the case… in fact, blue was more often associated with girls and pink with boys.

In the west during the Middle Ages, the color red was associated with the masculine because it represented strength, war, fire and blood. It was fairly common that if a man had colored clothing, it was dyed red or pale red (i.e. "pink"). Pink was often used for male children, being a pale version of red. The color blue was associated with the feminine since the color often represented peace, harmony, water, the sky (and thus, Heaven), and the Virgin Mary. Even today, the Virgin Mary is associated with blue. They next time you see an image of Mary, notice either the blue shawl or the blue background. Arabs in the Middle East continue to paint the doors of their homes blue in a tradition to frighten away demons.

Despite regional differences in dress and culture, but there is evidence that these color conventions were adhered to through much of Western Europe and later on in the Americas. Apparently, pink sailor suits were common for boys in the early twentieth century. In a March 1914 edition of the American newspaper, The Sunday Sentinel, advice was given to new mothers about traditional colors to use with their children:

"If you like the color note on the little one's garments, use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention."

Even the Ladies Home Journal chimed in on the subject in their June 1918 edition with:

"There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."

While no one can say with certainty how people started associating the colors differently with the genders, changes started as early as the mid-1800s. In 1869, Louisa May Alcott wrote in her famous novel Little Women that a mother of twins "put a blue ribbon on the boy and a pink on the girl, French fashion, so you can always tell them apart." In the 19th and early 20th centuries, baby clothes often were all white.

Regardless of which color conventions was followed, it was common to dress infants and young children the same - in garb that we now would consider to be dresses. The upper classes would dress their young children in dresses with white collars and let their hair grow long. By dressing all children the same way, each child in the family could inherit and use the same clothes. My family has pictures dating back to the 1940s showing some of my male relatives at two or three years of age seemingly wearing "dresses" - although these black and white photographs don't indicate a color.

The identification of pink with femininity started to become widely accepted around the time of World War II. The Nazis use a pink triangle to identify homosexuals indicates that in Germany pink had become associated with the feminine. Regardless of how the change came about, by the middle of twentieth century, the association was strong enough for Emily Post to consider it proper etiquette for pink to be associated with girls and blue with boys.

So, is pink for girls and blue for boys? It doesn't seem so clear to me...