If Girls Prefer the Color Pink, It's Because, on Some Level, They're Being Told They Should (2024)

Rebecca Crawford describes herself as “a flaming liberal feminist in every possible way.” She didn’t find out her daughter Abigail’s sex until after she was born. The Smith College alum then dressed Abigail in her brother’s hand-me-downs and regularly said, “All colors are for all people.” So when, as a toddler, Abigail “went straight for the pink,” Crawford says, “I was like, man, where are you getting this from? What gives?”

The answer is surprisingly complex.

Most scientific studies report that both boys and girls prefer primary colors, chief among them blue. Yet when it comes to pink, girls in the U.S. and Great Britain choose the color significantly more often than their male peers. In fact, you can see girls as young as 2 starting to prefer pink over other colors.

But why? Is girls’ taste for rose tones predestined by biology, or is there a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby girls prefer pink because they get the message they should?

While a big study earlier this century suggested that there is something innate in girls that attracts them to pink — possibly going back to hunter-gatherer days — more research shows that girls tend to like pink because, somewhere along the line, they're told to.

Studies in infants may be the key to understanding the true reason behind color preference.

With research pointing in all different directions, it's easy to get confused about whether a preference for pink is nature or nurture. Social scientists at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, recently surveyed 200 college students about the possible reasons behind color preference, and they were split, too: In data that has yet to be published elsewhere, just under 15% leaned toward a biological explanation for the phenomenon. More than half — about 55% — believed it was based on environmental factors, such as seeing pink on other females. A quarter suspected equal roles for both biology and socialization.

Part of the confusion could be caused by a much-publicized 2007 paper published in the journal Current Biology, which found that female adults “prefer colors with ‘reddish’ contrast” more so than male ones. The paper theorized that “girls’ preference for pink may have evolved” from hunter-gatherer times, when women needed to identify “edible red leaves embedded in green foliage.” Or maybe, the authors speculated, it’s because women have traditionally served as caregivers and “empathizers,” driving natural selection to give a bump to those who are pink-sensitive enough “to discriminate subtle changes in skin color due to emotional states and social-sexual signals.” So the theory is that girls like pink because they’re in training to figure out when someone’s upset or desires them. Hmm.

If these evolutionary biology explanations were true, though, you'd find women all over the world exhibiting the same preference. But studies show that's not the case (which would make sense in places like Germany, Nigeria, and Chad, where red symbolizes bad luck). And if a preference for pink were innate, says Erica Weisgram, Ph.D., the professor of psychology who polled the college students, “You would expect to see the pink preference in very young infants.” But a large study of children ages 7 months to 5 years reported in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology showed the opposite. Researchers offered kids pairs of small objects, things like plastic clips, koosh balls, and measuring cups. One of the items was pink and the other wasn’t. The data revealed no evidence of preference for pink in infants.

Yet beginning around age 2, boys and girls responded differently to the color: “Girls’ liking for pink increased between 2 and 3 years of age and remained high through 4 years. In contrast, boys’ response to pink showed a dramatic decline between 3 and 4 years of age.” More research reveals why this timeline makes perfect sense.

Color preference emerges at a time when kids are learning more about the world around them.

By age 2, children have already been exposed to constant messaging about color. Take the experience of Jen van Buren, a social worker whose 5-year-old started gravitating to pink around her third birthday: “pink dolls, pink dresses, pink clothes, pink bows — if it’s got pink it in, it’s awesome.” Van Buren doesn’t really care for pink, so she’d bought clothes in other colors. But the child’s grandmothers sent pink garb, her pint-sized friends wore it, “and if you go to stores,” the Tyngsborough, Massachusetts mom of three says, “some are getting a little better but the marketing is still clearly pink for girls.”

Her experience is backed up by studies, going back to the '80s, that infant girls wear more pink, and own more pink pacifiers and pink jewelry. But you don't need studies to tell you that. Just look at any child's clothing store, which are still divided into "girl" and "boy" sections (even online), with pink dominating one side of the store and not the other.

These signals come at a critical time: The age at which interest in pink diverges in boys and girls also aligns with the window — between the second and third birthday — when children begin to notice their world is split into two genders. As they try to sort out what it means to be a boy and what it means to be a girl, their experiences make it clear that color is part of the deal.

A 1990 study confirmed as much. Researchers gave children between 39 and 72 months toy felt pigs that varied only in color. When they asked the kids which pigs were boys and which were girls, the children’s answers tracked gender stereotypes. For an individual child, this process means looking around them and reasoning: “Girls wear pink. I’m a girl. I must like pink.”

Even children with gender dysphoria have demonstrated inverted patterns of color preference. In other words, kids who would have been dubbed boys at birth but identified as girls instead preferred pink, too. Preference tracked gender identity, not biologically assigned sex.

Rebecca Crawford, Abigail’s mom, saw what happens next: “When she wore frilly and pink and all things feminine, there was a lot more attention paid to her by random strangers at the grocery store.” By the time children are 3 or 4, the message that girls like pink (or even just a level of comfort with the color after being surrounded by it) can become so entrenched in their little female brains that it feels natural to them. They will say it has nothing to do with other people; they just like it. But that doesn’t mean it’s innate.

Then there’s the fact that pink hasn’t always been “the girl color.”

Jo B. Paoletti, Ph.D., a textiles historian and author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America, says that before the 1920s, all kids in America wore white because bleach was the only name in the kid-laundry game. When their clothing started to be gussied up with colorful ribbons, Paoletti argues, in many places blue was the girl color and pink was the boy color.

Indeed, a 1918 trade publication for infant clothing dug up by researchers reads, “the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl,” since pink was seen as more “decided and stronger” and blue more “delicate and dainty.” Until the 1950s, Paoletti says, pink was the most popular first birthday cake color for both boys and girls, and you could still find people who would swear that pink is for boys.

Old Disney movies also provide a tip off: What color is Snow White’s top? Blue. How about Michael’s pajamas in the original version of Peter Pan? Pink. Remember how Sleeping Beauty’s dress morphs from blue to pink and back again in the dancing scene? The movie’s release date, 1959, reflects shifting norms — and some say the color-changing dress resulted from a debate at the studio as to whether pink or blue best embodied femininity.

Why does it matter whether girls really prefer pink or we foist it on them?

For one thing, it’s big business. In 2018, the U.S. baby and young children's clothing market was valued at approximately 21 billion U.S. dollars. As Peggy Orenstein pointed out in Cinderella Ate My Daughter, the more different clothes and toys are marketed to different babies, the more companies can sell. Girls also receive deeper messages from clothing, since pink is often paired with fragile, inactive motifs like hearts and butterflies that aren’t related to an occupation while clothing in “boys’ colors” promotes adventure (e.g., trucks, spaceships) and vocation (e.g., telescopes and science beakers).

It’s certainly possible some cell-based genetic change occurs at age 2 that shifts color preference. But no one has been able to prove it. Until they do, shouldn’t parents default to assuming all colors are for everyone? (And this isn't just about girls. Boys shouldn’t be pressured by their clothes either.) Van Buren makes a good point: If true feminism means the right to choose, her daughter should be able to like whatever color she wants. But real choice, real self-determination, means the freedom to sort through options without a societal finger on one side of the scale.

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