Take a look around you. Do you have daughters and can you see a few pink toys and clothes? What about the children? Do they have many toys or the room in blue tones? The "Pink and blue Project", the Pink and Blue Project, explores cultural preferences and differences in the tastes of children (and their parents) from various societies.
The truth is that the market is flooded with toys for boys and toys for girls and that many times we unconsciously transmit gender roles to our children. But Pink and Blue Project photographs impress…
Through this series, photographer JeongMee Yoon raises interesting questions about gender socialization and identity, roles and stereotypes, the relationship between gender and consumerism, the globalization of consumerism and the new capitalism.
The project began with his five-year-old daughter who just wanted to wear pink clothes and play with dolls of the same color. The author realized that it was not a unique case and began to collect these photographs.
In the images, which the artist has collected for years, he sees boys and girls in their rooms surrounded by their things: clothes, toys, paintings, stuffed animals ... The difference is huge between boys and girls: in them, the tone that floods everything is blue, while the girls appear bathed in pink.
The "Multicolor Project"
Personally they seem somewhat disturbing images, I could not explain very well why, it is as if those colors had "possessed" their lives. At home, we have always tried not to buy anything pink for girls (another thing is that you receive gifts in that color), so a similar photograph in my house would have nothing to do with what the Pink and Blue Project shows.
As for the clothes, the roses would be the garments with less predominance, no doubt. Maybe something pink like drawings or ornaments, but we opted for a multicolored closet.
There would be toys of all colors, also some roses and others blue, there are dolls but also construction games, dinosaurs and cars. Of course, now that they watch TV from time to time, we realize that there are still ads for toys for boys and girls and that makes them lean towards "those of girls."
The truth is that, also if we take a look at the toy catalogs, most of them choose to divide the toys for boys and girls and the predominant tones are blue and pink. So, to a certain extent it seems logical that boys identify with one type of toys and girls for others.
With all the behavior patterns associated with some and other toys, of which we have spoken on more than one occasion. Girls 'toys are more related to beauty and home care, while boys' toys are related to science, industry, construction ...
These types of divided guidelines for the two genders profoundly affect the identification of the gender group of children and their social learning. That's why at home we try to "counteract" that enormous force of advertising, television, shop windows ... and the weight of the social convention, trying a kind of "Multicolor Project".
It wasn't always blue for boys and pink for girls
But the blue-boy and pink-girl relationship was not always like that. In fact, until relatively recently the convention for girls was blue and pink was more masculine (related to the strength of the blood, another topic of boy-strong?).
For example, formerly the color with which the kings were identified was red because of their symbolism and the fact that the dye of this color was so expensive that very few could afford it. That is why in many paintings the crown princes, of children or babies, wore pink, as well as the Infant Jesus.
On the other hand the blue color was identified with the Virgin Mary (perhaps because of the purity of the sky, or because it was also an expensive pigment ...) with which the color was identified with the virgin purity, with the softness, passivity ... values Traditionally associated with women.
But we also have to keep in mind that most of the children's clothes were unisex, light tones (white, creams ...) and both boys and girls dressed in skirts.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, certain changes led to these pink or red-boy and blue-girl identifications starting to change, and there was a greater tendency to leave whites. For example, artificial pigments that reduced the high prices of blue and red dyes, or later the fashion of sailor suits for them, which imposed blue.
It would be after World War II when the concept of gender equality became stronger and the colors associated with each gender were turned around, as well as the connections with them, until the opposite effect was achieved, as we see today. According to JeongMee Yoon, these color customs are a worldwide standard (at least in the world where there is advertising for toys and clothes and families can afford to choose).
And as girls grow their preference for pink decreases (in fact I think it is a color that is not widely used in adolescence), the truth is that the original associations of stereotypes remain.
That is precisely why it is possible that boys and girls who feel strong, rebellious and independent move away from that "rose." But do you really know that girls do not have to put on makeup and can study or play the sport they want?
As we see, that pink is for girls and blue for boys is a convention tinged with many assumptions and stereotypesThat's why we don't like the distinction. And we would like to see much more equality, much more "the unisex", in clothes, toys, advertising, jobs, salaries, home care ...
Official Site | JeongMee Yoon
Photos | Thinkstock and JeongMee Yoon
In Babies and more | The gender stereotypes we transmit to our children, Differences between boys and girls, how do times change?
