The Color Blue

I used the color of the sky merely as an example to clarify the purpose of my resolution. My resolution is clearly stated as being: "Resolved: The color blue (being all colors) is a popular color due mainly to other reasons besides peer and societal influence. " To affirm my resolution I will start by proving this issue first through genetics. "Researchers in a study at Newcastle University led by neuroscientist Anya Hurlbert asked a group of men and women to look at about 1,000 pairs of coloured rectangles on a computer screen in a dark room and pick the ones they liked best as quickly as possible. Afterwards, Hurlbert and colleagues plotted the results along the colour spectrum and found that while men prefer blue, women gravitate towards the pinker end of the blue spectrum. Hurlbert believes women's preference for pink may have evolved on top of a natural, universal preference for blue. Hurlbert said for men, thinking about colours was less important because as hunters they just needed to spot something dark and shoot it. " As for the wider human preference for blue, Dr Hurlbert said this may have something to do with our love for the grassy plains of our place of origin, in Africa, where the sky is an important feature of the landscape. "I would favour evolutionary arguments here," she said. "Going back to our 'savannah' days, we would have a natural preference for a blue sky, because it signalled good weather. " . http://www.cbc.ca... . http://www.reuters.com... . http://www.time.com... As the study has shown, color preference has become differentiated between sexes due to our ancient job-roles. Additionally we as humans are not the only species that have color preferences based on evolutionary reasons. For example note that a species of bumblebee prefer a color of flower for evolutionary reasons: . http://www.foxnews.com... Males prefer the color blue due to a special type of sexual dimorphism. This is evidenced by the study done and by the evidence of other evolutionary color preferences . http://en.wikipedia.org... The whole idea of "pink for girls and blue for boys" was not common practice in the US until the 20th century. In the 1800s, all babies were dressed in white dresses, which extended below their legs (that hardly seems like a practical garment, but apparently crawling was not encouraged back then). In the early 1900s, color became popular and people who chose to dress their children in conventional colors were advised to dress girls in blue and boys in pink. Blue was considered delicate and exquisite and pink strong and masculine. In one of their issues from 1927, Time Magazine wrote ""In Belgium, Princess Astrid gave birth a fortnight ago to a 7-lb. daughter. The cradle . . . had been optimistically outfitted in pink, the color for boys, that for a girl being blue. " It was not until the 1950's we started doing the reverse, and these days, few people would decorate their little boy's room in pink. It does help to identify the sex of a baby; I can never tell if (dressed) babies are boys or girls, but if the child in question is wearing a pink dress, you can be pretty sure it's not a boy. Regardless of how children were dressed, it seems like girls all over the world have always liked the color pink.