Why do girls like pink?

[Elfdart]

Not the singer, the color. I went to buy a present for one of the women at work who is leaving, and who has a little girl. I went to the toy section and everything made for girls was pink.

At first I thought it was the result of some kind of indoctrination, but then I remembered my kid sister when she was a preschooler. She didn't care for dolls or any of the other girls' toys my parents got her. She preferred the boys' stuff my brother and I got, especially the cap guns.

Of course she made Dad paint her cap pistols pink.

Is there some kind of preference for pink things hardwired in the brains of little girls, or is it the result of society?

[Broomstick]

I hate, HATE, absolutely LOATHE pink. I always have. Ugh. {{{shudder}}}

So I think it's little girls being told over and over they like pink. And, as you noted, for little girls there is little choice in some items. They're pink whether you like it or not.

And sometimes still for big girls - when I was in the hospital earlier this year my husband brought me a robe. I asked him how he managed to find on that wasn't pink. He went to the men's department.

[Dooey Jo]

For whatever reason, pink has come to represent femininity and love and happy-cute feelings in most (all?) of Western civilisation, and as long as all toys and clothes marketed for girls remain pink, it's going to reinforce itself. It's hardly biologically hard-wired into their brains to like it.

[Ravencrow]

I don't like pink.

And I don't know why some girls must have pink for everything. Perhaps it's just a softer color, reinforced by society and sometimes parents that it is a girl's color. Items for baby girls tend to be pink. Since this is one of the colors that they probably associate with things belonging to them earliest in their life, perhaps this leads to them naturally having an affinity to the color in topic.

[Lord Woodlouse]

I like pink.

But yeah, it's probably mostly indoctrination. Not necessarily active from family.

[Rye]

Totally social. Believe it or not, the colours used to be reversed, pink used to be a colour for boys and blue for girls.

[Stark]

Man, some of my coolest shirts are pink.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

It's obviously social since it simply doesn't hold true outside of the Anglophone world and some parts of Europe anyway.

That said, because of the three people who think that it's biological, Fox News would conclude that 13% of the posters on SD.net are misogynistic, all of whom are male, and since half the population is male that means 26% of the men on Sd.net are misogynists and since misogyny is against liberal values and everyone on Sd.net is liberal this proves that a "large number" of liberals are hypocrites, and because hypocrisy is wrong VOTE THOMPSON IN '08!

[Frank Hipper]

It's obviously social since it simply doesn't hold true outside of the Anglophone world and some parts of Europe anyway.

That said, because of the three people who think that it's biological, Fox News would conclude that 13% of the posters on SD.net are misogynistic, all of whom are male, and since half the population is male that means 26% of the men on Sd.net are misogynists and since misogyny is against liberal values and everyone on Sd.net is liberal this proves that a "large number" of liberals are hypocrites, and because hypocrisy is wrong VOTE THOMPSON IN '08!

I've seen FUQable, and I've seen FUQable, but this post is stunning in it's artistic craftsmanship.

Brah-vo, m'dear!

[phred]

Im a guy and I like Pink... oh you mean the color. nevermind

Seriously though, I think its beaten into them at a young age.

I have a friend with 5 year old twins, and the girl loves pink stuff despite being just as masculine as the boy is.

[Solauren]

I'm thinking social bombardment.

Anything for young girls invariable has pink in it.

Hell, go to a wall paper store; going to paper a little girls room? Here's the pink wall papers....

[The Duchess of Zeon]

It's obviously social since it simply doesn't hold true outside of the Anglophone world and some parts of Europe anyway.

That said, because of the three people who think that it's biological, Fox News would conclude that 13% of the posters on SD.net are misogynistic, all of whom are male, and since half the population is male that means 26% of the men on Sd.net are misogynists and since misogyny is against liberal values and everyone on Sd.net is liberal this proves that a "large number" of liberals are hypocrites, and because hypocrisy is wrong VOTE THOMPSON IN '08!

I've seen FUQable, and I've seen FUQable, but this post is stunning in it's artistic craftsmanship.

Brah-vo, m'dear! :D

Thanks kindly for the compliment.

[Lisa]

I like pink, but i also like blue and purple. I'm more likely to paint my nails blue or silver then pink.

[Broomstick]

Oddly enough, I do use pink nail polish. A very, very pale frosty pink - because with my coloring using almost anything else looks nasty.

[Winston Blake]

It's a bit of a 'chicken or egg' problem. Do girls like pink toys because adults like to colour girl toys pink? Or do adults colour them pink because it makes them more attractive to girls?

Here's an idea - newborn babies are pink. I recall something about pupil dilation in girls and women when they view babies (indicating interest) which doesn't occur in males. Perhaps a small, cute pink toy has a psychological connection to a small, cute pink baby?

[Molyneux]

Considering that until fairly recently, boys were expected to wear pink and red (for valor) and girls wore largely soft colors like pastel blues...it's completely environmental.

[Galvatron]

http://www.sanrio.com/

[Winston Blake]

Considering that until fairly recently, boys were expected to wear pink and red (for valor) and girls wore largely soft colors like pastel blues...it's completely environmental.

OK, but how do you know that boys being expected to wear pink for 'valor' is any less environmental than girls being expected to wear pink for 'prettiness'?

[Pick]

I hate pink, but I love deep red. In fact, I don't like "bright" colors--bright green, pink, orange or yellow. They hurt my eyes to look at much.

[Howedar]

Considering that until fairly recently, boys were expected to wear pink and red (for valor) and girls wore largely soft colors like pastel blues...it's completely environmental.

OK, but how do you know that boys being expected to wear pink for 'valor' is any less environmental than girls being expected to wear pink for 'prettiness'?

Where did he say it wasn't?

The fact that there's been such a huge swing is, itself, the obvious evidence that it's an environmental thing.

[Winston Blake]

Considering that until fairly recently, boys were expected to wear pink and red (for valor) and girls wore largely soft colors like pastel blues...it's completely environmental.

OK, but how do you know that boys being expected to wear pink for 'valor' is any less environmental than girls being expected to wear pink for 'prettiness'?

Where did he say it wasn't?

The fact that there's been such a huge swing is, itself, the obvious evidence that it's an environmental thing.

Environmental obviously, but completely environmental? For all we know, boys have a natural attraction to pink that's suppressed by its modern association with femininity. The fact that there's been a swing in colour preference doesn't shed any light on how much of a role nature plays.

[PeZook]

There were economic factors, too.

Red was a difficult color to dye clothes in - in fact, owning red clothes pretty much meant your were the nobility. Only purple was harder to reliably achieve.

Therefore, if you wanted to show off your wealth, you would want to wear purple or red, because that's expensive. Unfortunately, in many countries purple was reserved for kings, so red it was for most nobles.

Red was culturally associated with valor, probably because it's an "agressive" color (blood is red). A lot of noblemen wore pastel pink, in fact - because the dyes were unreliable and faded quickly, or just didn't get red to begin with. On the other hand, colors like blue were quite easy to get.

And guess who had to show off how fucking wealthy and valorous they were throughout human history?

Yeah. Men. So men wore pink. To show how manly they were

Today, we can assign arbitrary meanings to arbitrary colors however we like, because we can pretty much make anything into any color. So culture is the only factor in things like "What color should decorate the toys my girls use?"

[The Duchess of Zeon]

To ascribe inherent desires for particular broad colours to evolution in any sense is ludicrous. Certain colours may combine with other traits to indicate desirability, but that by no means makes those other traits dispensible--no human brain is stupid enough at any level to associate a pink piece of paper with the shape, texture, facial expressions and actions of looking at and holding a child, even if there's a tendency to response also to the pinkness of the flesh of a child. To say that because one component in a particular evolutionary response exists that component can be taken out of context of that evolutionary response and applied on a broad basis is the height of laughably nonsensical thinking. The idea that all human behaviours must be ascribed a purpose is a rather sad and silly one: We are highly inefficient creatures, and inefficiency means that very, very many behaviours may exist as useless byproducts of evolutionary traits. One of these is certainly our tendency to mandate irrational cultural behaviours, and the personal colour preferences of an individual being generalized across society could not be a better candidate for falling into such a classification.