The Pink Lie

"The Pink Lie – When boys wore pink and girls wore blue" overturns our deepest assumptions about gender colors. Today, pink is for girls and blue is for boys. But this book reveals that until the 1940s, the opposite was true. Trade publications from 1918 explicitly stated: "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls."



Sociologist Sarah Rose explains the logic: Pink was seen as a stronger, more decided color (a derivative of warlike red) and thus suitable for boys, while blue was considered delicate and dainty (associated with the Virgin Mary), fitting for girls.



"The Pink Lie" traces how a marketing push by US department stores flipped the script to sell more clothes, proving that our "biological" preferences are actually just the result of a mid-century advertising campaign. It is a fascinating history of how corporate interests construct our identity before we are even born.