Pink and Blue

Jo B. Paoletti

Description

Unraveling the complicated tale of children's fashion

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Jo B. Paoletti's journey through the history of children's clothing began when she posed the question, "When did we start dressing girls in pink and boys in blue?" To uncover the answer, she looks at advertising, catalogs, dolls, baby books, mommy blogs and discussion forums, and other popular media to examine the surprising shifts in attitudes toward color as a mark of gender in American children's clothing. She chronicles the decline of the white dress for both boys and girls, the introduction of rompers in the early 20th century, the gendering of pink and blue, the resurgence of unisex fashions, and the origins of today's highly gender-specific baby and toddler clothing.

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Understanding Children's Clothing
2. Dresses Are for Girls and Boys
3. Pants Are for Boys and Girls
4. A Boy Is Not a Girl
5. Pink Is for Boys
6. Unisex Child Rearing and Gender-Free Fashion
7. Gendered and Neutral Clothing since 1985

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Vie de famille
• Parentalité et Éducation des Enfants
• Gender Studies
• Social Science
• Popular Culture
• Sociologie, société et politique
• General officer
• History of the United States
• Parenting
• Gender
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 06 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253001306
• Langue: English

Extrait

PINK
AND
Blue

PINK
AND
Blue
Telling the Boys from the Girls in America
Jo B. Paoletti
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington and indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931
2012 by Jo Paoletti All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Paoletti, Jo Barraclough, [date]
Pink and blue : telling the boys from
the girls in America / Jo B. Paoletti.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00117-7 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00130-6 (e-book) 1. Boys clothing-United States-History. 2. Girls clothing-United States-History. 3. Clothing and dress-United States-Sex differences.
I. Title.
TT630.P36 2012
646 .30973-dc23
2011039889
1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13 12
To Jim,
Maria, and
Danny,
with all my love
CONTENTS




Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Understanding Children s Clothing

2. Dresses Are for Girls and Boys

3. Pants Are for Boys and Girls

4. A Boy Is Not a Girl

5. Pink Is for Boys

6. Unisex Child Rearing and Gender-Free Fashion

7. Gendered and Neutral Clothing since 1985

Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It has taken me over twenty years to write this book and thirty years to do the research. This is not boasting; it is a humble admission of my own tendencies to distraction and procrastination, aggravated by the normal vicissitudes of motherhood and scholarly life. There have been false starts, dead ends, and so many bouts of writer s block that not writing became my normal habit. There would still be no book if it weren t for the help, inspiration, and encouragement of family, friends, and colleagues who have never let this project disappear from my imagination.
Professional organizations are the heart of any discipline, but especially for a nomad like me. I would like to thank the Costume Society of America and the Association of College Professors of Textiles and Clothing (now the International Textiles and Apparel Association) for welcoming me as a graduate student, mentoring me as a scholar, and giving me a supportive but critical environment to publish and present my work. The lively community and fresh ideas of the Popular Culture Association, especially the Fashion and Appearance area, under the leadership of Joe Hancock of Drexel University, have also nourished me. The Material Culture Caucus of the American Studies Association helped me adjust to a new research paradigm when the dissolution of the University of Maryland s Textiles and Consumer Economics Department resulted in my migration to American Studies.
For involving me in projects that helped keep me out of the doldrums, I am grateful to Colleen Callahan, Claudia Kidwell, Carol Kregloh, Kate Rowland, and Valerie Steele. Michael Kimmel and Grant McCracken gave valuable feedback on an early paper that eventually grew into this book. Peggy Orenstein revived this project with a lengthy interview for a New York Times Magazine article about Disney Princesses that caused me to shake off my doubts and get back to work.
This research would not have been possible without access to archives and collections. I am indebted to the staff at the Winterthur Museum and Library, especially Kay Collins of Academic Programs, who facilitated my stay as a visiting scholar, and Jeanne Solensky, Associate Librarian, Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera. Patricia Hogan, curator of Toys and Dolls, Strong National Museum of Play, facilitated my use of their marvelous collection of paper dolls. Andrea Hughes, Curator of American Collections at the Children s Museum of Indianapolis, took time from her very busy schedule to help me examine items in multiple collections: garments, magazines, photographs, and more paper dolls. Mary Jane Teeters-Eichacker, Curator of Social History at the Indiana State Museum, not only opened the museum s costume collection to me but has followed up with additional finds she has encountered in her own research.
Russell A. Johnson of the History and Special Collections for the Sciences of the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library at UCLA deserves special thanks for having the visionary idea that a collection of baby books might be of interest to researchers. His warm and enthusiastic response to my initial query resulted in my applying for a James and Sylvia Thayer Short-Term Research Fellowship. The fellowship made it possible for me to travel across the country and access this unique collection.
My University of Maryland colleagues John Caughey, Christina Hanhardt, R. Gordon Kelly, Katie King, Jeffrey McCune, Sheri Parks, Eden Segal, Mary Sies, Nancy Struna, and Psyche Williams-Forson provided moral support and collegial conversations. Reference librarians are worth their weight in gold; I can never adequately thank Barbara Wurtzel for her long-distance (and long-term!) research help and Eric Lindquist for helping me keep my research tool kit up-to-date. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Jane Behnken, Sarah Wyatt Swanson, Raina Polivka, and June Silay of Indiana University Press, who provided support and guidance throughout the long book-birthing process. Copyeditor Elaine Otto snipped, tightened, and smoothed my manuscript with diligence and humor. In addition, I have benefited from the editing efforts of Renee Lagrid and Marybeth Shea. Marybeth has also been a steadfast source of questions, photographs, and company.
Finally, I must give loving thanks to my family. Jim, my patient husband of over forty years, has encouraged my work and made it possible by taking on laundry, grocery shopping, and cooking without being asked. At this point, he knows when I am in a writing groove and when it s time for a beer. Our children, Maria (b. 1982) and Danny (b. 1986), didn t set out to inspire my research, nor did I take on parenthood in order to find a new area of inquiry. But the universe brought them into my life at exactly the right time, and I am grateful for their willingness to let me observe their childhood so closely.
INTRODUCTION
This journey began nearly thirty years ago with a deceptively simple question: When did we start dressing girls in pink and boys in blue? As it turned out, the complexity of this topic is astonishing, extending far beyond the color of blankets and booties. The visual vocabulary seems endless: pink and blue, ruffles and neckties, lace and camouflage, kittens and lions, butterflies and airplanes. Gender symbolism in American children s fashions is ubiquitous. It is also transmitted clearly enough that most children know these unwritten rules thoroughly by the age of three. This might lead to the assumption that the rules have changed little over time, but the opposite is true. In little more than a century, the rules have changed so dramatically that the conventions of 2010 are nearly the reverse of those in 1890.
This book is an attempt to describe and explain some of the most evident of those changes, to settle some popular questions about the rationale and effect of gendered clothing on children, and to clear a path for future research. I am excruciatingly aware that you, my readers, may be dress historians, scholars or students from some other field (ranging from gender studies to neurobiology), or interested parents or grandparents. There is no way to satisfy everyone, so I hope that you will forgive me if I seem to be too academic, not theoretical enough, or I describe clothing in too much detail. As long as we continue to grapple with questions about the nature and origin of gender differences, it will be important for researchers to communicate their findings in accessible language. My intention is to write clearly and to cite thoroughly, which I hope will satisfy readers across the spectrum.
It should be evident that this book is an initial foray into the topic and cannot be about American children in all of their diversity. As is the case with much of fashion history, the artifactual and printed record is skewed toward middle- and upper-class consumers. My primary evidence is drawn from a wide variety of sources:

Advice manuals and childcare literature, in the form of books and articles in popular magazines
Retail catalogs, especially Sears, Roebuck Co.
Advertisements and articles in fashion magazines and newspapers
Photographs in public and private collections
Paper dolls published in newspapers, magazines, and booklets
Baby record books
Surviving examples of children s clothing in public and private collections
Trade publications for the garment industry, especially Earnshaw s Infants, Girls and Boys Wear Review
Comments posted on blogs, news articles, and online social networks.
Each of these sources provides a generous-even overwhelming- amount of evidence, but all are much less informative about the influence of race, class, religion, or region on clothing options and choices. Until the 1960s, only white children were depicted in most clothing advertising and catalogs. Even in the baby books, which were filled out for a specific child, the child s race was not apparent unless the record included photographs, a copy of the birth certificate, or similar evi