I went shopping with my sister today, because she needed to get some stuff for my nephew. As we walked into the baby department, right away you could see that the girls and boys section was split up. The boys section was mainly made up of clothes that were blue and green, in other words "manly colors." Some of them had footballs, soccer balls, airplanes, cars, and etc. featured on them. While the girls section, was made up of clothes that were pink and purple, with bows and frills on them. It's clear that society has assigned color to a gender and that this is the "norm."
In a way, gender assignment begins even before birth. When parents find out the sex of their baby, they start to buy clothes, paint the nursery, and pick a name. Parents assume that since it's either going to be a girl or boy, they can start to buy things that are associated with the gender. Really not knowing if that remains to be true. As I was reading the chapter, when picking out names for babies, parents choosing girl names for their sons thought that by giving a boy a girl's name " it would be adopting the status of the less- valued gender." Which you could interpret in many ways. The way I interpret this is that females are not equal to males, that being a female is kind of an insult.
Not only that, gender reveal parties have become a popular thing to do for parents who want to wait and find out the gender. When they find out the gender of the baby, the colors blue or pink are always being revealed. Once again, we see how color is being assigned to a gender.
I guess in a way we shouldn't be assigning a gender role to babies before they're born. But at the same time, I think this makes it easier to distinguish. I'm not saying that this is right or fair to the unborn baby, but just that it helps. I really don't know how it was decided that blue means boy and pink means girl, but it's been around so long that people have just used to this to identify gender.
I agree that blue and pink are the colors that are a part of gender norms. Since, blue is to boys and pink is to girls, I have a brother who won't ever wear pink because other guys don't wear that color. So I think that some guys do fear to wear pink because they might be seen differently than who they really are. I also agree with your statement that it is easier to distinguish the genders if assigned at birth.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with your comment that blue means boy and pink means girl, and it's been around so long that people just use that to identify gender. I hear all the time, " you do not want a blue stroller for a girl, because blue is for boys not, girls." In my opinion a stroller is both for a boys and girls so the color doesn't matter. I also agree with the comment boys don't wear a certain color because it isn't a "boy" color. My little brother always picked out "girl" socks out of the sock basket and my mom would tell him not to wear them because those are not boy socks. And the socks were just purple, so I didn't see a problem with it. They are just socks.
You raise a great point when you say that assigning gender to babies helps--this made me think about how, specifically, it helps, and who it mainly helps. What do you think?
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