by eesmith | 2025-09-08 08:16:16+00:00
My simple reading from Google Scholar concludes it was not an unpopular recommendation for child clothing in the early 1900s.

"Pink and blue: the color of gender" 2008, Paolo Frassanito & Benedetta Pettorini, https://photo718.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/pi...

> The Sunday Sentinal, an American newspaper, in 1914 advised mothers: “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” (March 29, 1914). Similarly, Ladies Home Journal informed: “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” (June, 1918).

> The current pink for girls and blue for boys was not uniform until the 1950s [11]. It would seem that Nazi Germany had something to do with the association of pink with femininity: catholic traditions in Germany and neighboring countries reverse the current color coding, because of the strong association of blue with the Virgin Mary; the Nazis in their concentration camps use a pink triangle to identify homosexuals. The Nazi’s choice of pink suggests that, by the 1930s, it was a color that in Germany had become associate with girls.

> Thus, Dress Maker Magazine stated: “The preferred color to dress young boys in was pink! Blue was reserved for girls as it was considered the paler, more dainty of the two colors, and pink was thought to be the stronger (akin to red). It was not until WWII that the colors were reversed and pink was used for girls and blue for boys...”

"The child in fashion, 1750 to 1920", 1999, Kristina Seleshanko, https://archive.org/details/childinfashion170000sele/page/28... has the same citations, and similar commentary:

> This reasoning may seem very odd to us today, but the opposite way of thinking did not take firm hold until around World War Two. Pink, being most closely associated with bold, daring red, was considered more masculine, while blue (always an easier color to achieve in dyes) was softer and more subdued. Too, blue is the color associated with the Virgin Mary, and, in the Middle ages, the color of true lovers and faithful servants.

We can also consult literature from over a century ago.

Advice column from 1935. "Would you please tell me what color is used for a baby girl and for a baby boy?" "Pink for the boy and blue for the girl." https://archive.org/details/per_st-louis-post-dispatch_1935-...

Oddly, the same "Mrs. Carr" column in 1934 was asked "Is pink for the girl and blue for the boy, or just the opposite? A group of us girls are trying to decide." and replied "It used to be the fashion to dress boy babies with little touches of pink and girls with blue. I do not think mothers now pay much attention to this custom." https://archive.org/details/per_st-louis-post-dispatch_1934-...

That suggests it wasn't so clear cut as we think of it now.

A 1923 advertisement for "comfy carriage robes ... pink for the boy and blue for the girl." is at https://archive.org/details/madison-capital-times-1923-04-04... while this 1928 advertisement for crib blankets has the colors swapped, https://archive.org/details/victoriadailytimes19280612/mode/... .

A book on greeting cards from 1927 says this about the color for birth announcements, "From the first there was a controversy as to which was proper, pink for the boy and blue for the girl, or the opposite; finally and for all time this has been settled. Pink is generally regarded as the proper color for the girl baby and blue for the boy baby." https://archive.org/details/romanceofgreetin0000will/page/n2... .

Oh! This is neat! A 1917 book telling shopkeepers how to make more money advises them to describe things as facts, not opinions, giving the example at https://archive.org/details/makingmoremoneyi00hotcrich/page/...

> It is always vastly stronger to put the responsibility for the argument on the other -fellow. "They say pink is the proper color for a girl baby," is vastly more convincing than "I should think you would take pink for the girl baby."

I agree that by the 1950s it was boy=blue, girl=pink in modern (US) culture, but it sure does appear that in the early part of the 1900s that boy=pink, girl=blue was not unpopular, but more that it was in flux. And it appears there was a profit motive for shopkeepers to affirm that bias.

Can you provide a source for the claim that blue was an unpopular color for girls and pink was an unpopular color for boys around 1900?