Pink Is Just A Color: On Underlying Gender Role Stereotypes

From the moment a baby girl is born, we put her in a pink onesie, in a pink room and dress her in what we think are feminine colors like pink and purple.

From the moment a baby boy is born, we put him in a blue onesie, in a blue room and dress him in blue clothes.

When they grow up we buy girls barbies in the pink aisle of the toy store and we buy boys race cars in the other aisle of the toy store.

From the moment a child is born we already put them in a box of gender role assignments.

We don’t let our girls buy toy guns and our boys buy barbies, because that’s not what they’re supposed to like. Girls are supposed to like cute things and boys, rough and rugged toys.

What we don’t realize is that everything we do from the moment we put on that pink onesie is going to affect how a child grows up and the mindset they’re going to have.

Girls’ toys are dolls and kitchen cookware sets, because for the longest time, women have been viewed to be home makers and not part of the working force. And if boys start playing with cookware toys we tell them that these toys are for girls or girly and that they shouldn’t play with them. Girls are expected to be behaved, demure, and not play as rough as boys, we already create double standards for children as little as they can be, and these are what they will consider normal.

Parents determine whether or not children will have a sense of gender equality or not, even if they learn heteronormative ideas outside of home through socialization, it is still within the household that the foundation of their outlook towards gender is established.

There shouldn’t be assigned colors for boys and girls, or assigned toys, or double standards, let boys love the color pink and girls love toy cars and toy guns, let boys dress in whatever color they want and let girls do the same. Let girls play rough and rugged games if they want to.

Men should be able to wear pink and not be afraid to be viewed as weak or “girly.” The whole “real men wear pink” statement is actually still adhering to gender roles, because there shouldn’t even be such a notion of what a “real man” is.

Seemingly mundane things such as colors are actually becoming determinants of one’s identity, and they shouldn’t be.

Pink is just a color, nothing more, nothing less. 🙂

So I dressed up in all pink here, just because I wanted to, not because i think that this is what suits me as a woman. 🙂

Shoes from Zalora, Dress from @halftheprice on Instagram, Posie K Lip Kit from @bagexpress on Instagram.

Hope everyone’s having a good weekend! 🙂 Thanks for the read! 🙂