Adolf Hitler And Your Little Pink Princess

The BBC has an interesting story on the impact the color pink can have on a girl, but what I found truly amazing in the story was the role reversal colors have undergone in the previous 100 years.

According to the story, in the early 1900s, pink was the preferred colour for boys while girls were adorned with blue, which was considered the paler, more delicate shade on the color spectrum. Go shopping for kids clothes today, as you probably well know, and you’ll hit rack after rack of princessy pink crap for the girls and rack after rack of cool grays and blues for the boys.

But I digress.

Hitler. I was just getting there. So where does he come in?

Apparently he’s to blame for the role reversal of colors and gender. According to the story, when he shipped gays and lesbians off to concentration camps, he ordered the ones who could be “cured” to have a pink triangle attached to them. And soon the color became one and the same with femininity.

And Barbie.

But what damage has this caused? Well, one expert said it’s severely damaging to little girls, thwarting their independence by forcing them to conform to the girl-centric notion that pink is the only cool. Another expert basically shrugged his shoulders and said, “eh, whatever.”

I’m in the latter camp. Pink as a color rocks. I think it goes exceptionally well with brown. Am I going to fill my daughter’s closet with it? Of course not. Am I going to be peeved when she tries to do that herself one day? As long as she dresses herself, I could care less.

[Thanks to DaddyTypes for the story.]