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Home / Lifestyle

Kerre McIvor: Pink theory a bolt from the blue

By Kerre McIvor
Herald on Sunday·
6 Dec, 2014 08:24 PM4 mins to read

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Hypothesising about why girls like pink is a favourite game of academics. But does anyone else care? Photo / Getty Images

Hypothesising about why girls like pink is a favourite game of academics. But does anyone else care? Photo / Getty Images

Opinion by Kerre McIvorLearn more

Welcome to the silly season, the lead-up to the Christmas break. And could anything be sillier than an Australian Green MP's call for a No Gender December?

Larissa Waters, the Greens' spokeswoman for women, said buying girls pink soft toys and boys blue trucks for Christmas might seem harmless but such stereotypes about what boys and girls prefer could have a long-term impact.

She went so far as to claim that outdated stereotypes about girls and boys perpetuate gender inequality, "which feeds into very serious problems such as domestic violence and the gender pay gap".

Seriously? Give a girl a Barbie and she'll get the bash for life? I don't think so. Violence begets violence.

A girl growing up seeing her mother getting belted is far more likely to repeat the cycle than a child who grows up in a loving family and plays with dolls.

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Waters is not the first to express concerns about gender apartheid. Academics have a ball researching this issue, knowing their findings will generate a lot of debate within the wider community.

Seven years ago Professor Anya Herbert wanted to know whether girls preferred pink because of cultural or biological reasons.

She asked 208 young adult men and women to select their preferred colour from pairs of rectangles. The universal favourite appeared to be blue but when the women were shown a spectrum of hues, they preferred red.

From this, Herbert posited that women were hardwired to prefer reddish colours because back in the day, on the African savannah, women were on the prowl looking for ripe red berries, and healthy pink-cheeked men.

The reason blue was a universally popular colour, Herbert surmised, was also thanks to our savannah days. Blue skies meant fine weather and also signalled a good water source.

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I'm sure there was much more to Professor Herbert's findings - I've read only the media reports of the study, not the study itself - but really, that does seem like a lot of circumstantial tosh.

A few years later another author suggested pinks and blues were all about fashion.

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Guardian columnist Ben Goldacre quoted a 1918 edition of the Ladies Home Journal that laid down the law for fashionable mamas dithering about the colour of their baby's dress: "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 colour is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."

So it's all about fashion rather than genuine preference.

Another study, three years later, found that all children under 2 preferred toys with pink tones and round shapes. Yet another study looked at 34 rhesus monkeys and found male monkeys preferred toys with wheels while females alternated between the plush toys and the wheeled toys.

So it goes on, with academics happily playing in their laboratories while anxious parents await the results so they can ensure they are doing the Right Thing.

Since Waters called for a No Gender December I have tried to find empirical evidence that girls' playing with pink dollies would lead to their being bashed up by boys who had played with blue trucks when they were little.

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I couldn't find any. Which is not to say it's not there. It's just that I couldn't find any peer-reviewed study that showed cause and effect.

What I do know from my experience with children is they're contrary little beasts.

Spend a fortune on a pink fairy dress for a little girl and she's just as likely to dress the dog in it. Give a boy a Lego set and he'll trade it for his cousin's sparkly pink plastic shoes.

And give a child of any gender a hideously expensive toy with all the bells and whistles for Christmas, a toy that requires six AA batteries and an instruction manual in five languages, and they're just as likely to spend Christmas Day playing with water balloons from the $2 shop.

I spent a fortune stocking up on toys that would stimulate a baby's development when I was asked to mind my friends' 6-month-old.

He ignored them all in favour of a pink clothes peg.

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Smart boy.

Christmas is already over-commercialised, please, let's not politicise it, too.

Kerre McIvor is on Newstalk ZB, Monday to Thursday, 8pm-midnight

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