Happy Birthday, Bü, with both pink and blue

It's the birthday of my father-in-law, Friedrich: happy birthday, Bü! Last year I posted one of my favorite family photos, a picture of Friedrich (on the left) with his older brother Peter. (He looks so much like Jack in this photo.) They were the two oldest boys in a large family, born in the late 20s in Germany.

Bü's birthday coincided with a message from Lois, a friend of my mother's (who, like my mom, spent her childhood and youth in North Dakota). She shared this, on the topic of color coding for infants:

Your blog on the color pink reminds me of my bewilderment when I first paged through my Aunt Sophy's scrapbook from the 1920s. It contained all sorts of memorabilia as well as yellowing newspaper fragments relating to engagements, weddings, and births among her long gone circle of friends. At first, I felt mildly embarrassed for the printers in North Dakota who obviously hadn't a clue that pink was for girls, blue for boys--or perhaps they were color blind. 

My cousin Rodney's birth announcement (ca. 1926) [posted at the right] shows a baby swaddled in a pink-flowered blanket, and tucked into a pink basket! There were several announcements, and the color scheme was consistent. At last I went to the Internet and found that until about 1950, pink, as a watered down shade of red, a manly color, was assigned to boys; blue was considered more delicate, as well as being the color of the Virgin's robe, and hence more suitable for girls. I was so pleased to have the job printers of my home state vindicated! 

Lois also sent this photo of Pulmonaria, noting that its pink buds open to blue blooms: "best of both worlds." Thank you, Lois!

One little p.s. – it's so lovely to receive messages via email from readers,  especially when they include images and observations like this one. If you have a topic, link, video, or story that reminds you of with a blogpost here, please don't hesitate to contact me: ellenkmichel[at]gmail[dot]com.

LelliKelly: the 'world's worst commercial'... Ever?

My very discerning and opinionated digital native Generation Z niece, Jazzie, posted this message to her facebook page:

I found the world's worst commercial in Japanese or Chinese or Korean or something! (No clue what the language is. But apparently this is the WORLD's worst commercial. Ever.)

She goes on to say: I really, really love this.

So we are back in the PINK with LelliKelly, makers of crappy-but-sparkly stuff for young girls. (Check out all the grammatical errors at that website). There are so many problems with the LelliKelly commercials along every axis of race, class and gender (not to mention eco-awareness) that it's hard to know just where to begin. 

The girls in the ads certainly display an irrational exuberance, though, and their LelliKelly objects appear to give them access to an annoying-but-potent form of Girl Power. I can imagine their appeal, and the way it sets girls en route to those pink-striped Victoria's Secret bags. (The preteens want to be older, and the big girls want to be children again: it's an interesting tension that leaves them all back in those pink baby clothes – or does it? They do exude body confidence, but maybe it's the confidence that comes most easily when you are a spoiled babe?)

There's even a LelliKelly cookery book "with lots of suggestions and simple recipes made with seasonal produce plus invaluable nutritional information for a healthy, natural diet for all the family." Hmmm. What, no glitter or sparkles in those food items? Where's the fun in that?

Here is the video ad that Jazzie posted, and another in a German version. 

Following those, my own favorite LelliKelly ad, a parodic critique, perhaps the best kind. I have to say:
I really, really love this. 

But I also really, really love these boots. Your thoughts?

 

Portia Munson's Paintings, Photographs, and Other Projects

Portia Munson has a great variety of work at her website, including these photos in a series from 1994-1999, where she examines color coding as an indicator of the sex of children. Hint: one of each of the babies in these sets is a boy, and one is a girl.

There's an axial stone with teacup over there, too, looking like a metaphor for more than one marriage.

Her paintings of the past twenty years stand in formal contrast to the sensory overload of her sculptural installations. Munson isolates single objects to reveal the particulars of their structural and metaphorical implications. Here are a few of my favorites, including two that bear a link to previous posts: a small vase named "Out of the Blue" and another called "Crow."  Also included here is "Angel Food" and "Dolphin Hair Clip Under Glass."

Color Blind, Blinded by Color: 'The Pink and Blue Project' of JeongMee Yoon

The images here are by JeongMee Yoon, a photographer from South Korea
whose work makes visible the gender divisions that so often prevail in the bedrooms of children from the time they are born. If you search for her name, dozens of pink and blue photos will appear, pictures of children surrounded by possessions in the predominant color of their childhood. These are part of her Pink and Blue Project, which she describes as exploring:

the trends in cultural preferences and the differences in the tastes of children (and their parents) from diverse cultures, ethnic groups as well as gender socialization and identity. The work also raises other issues, such as the relationship between gender and consumerism, urbanization, the globalization of consumerism and the new capitalism.

Yoon explains that The Pink and Blue Project was prompted by her five-year-old daughter "who loves the color pink so much that she wanted to wear only pink clothes and play with only pink toys and objects." She also has an eleven-year-old son, who chooses clothing from the blue hues "even though he does not seem to particularly like the color blue over other colors." A couple of her examples defy the stereotypes but reinforce the idea of having a "favorite color" (one of those ubiquitous questions during childhood): "Lola and Her Yellow Things" and "Steve and His Red Things".

Yoon's work with this concept was the subject of a New York Times piece in February 2008, where the tone is fairly effusive about "the wonderful world of color." (There is a slide show by that name there, too.) A blogpost at Daughter Number Three considers the more invasive implications of gender color-typing. DN3 also links to an interesting post by social psychologist Sam Sommers called "Gender Stereotypes and the Fast Food Drive-Thru." (One more reason to avoid giving your kids this terrible food.)

It all got me thinking about how much energy parents invest in their children's objects and identities, a topic Jesse Ellison touched on in her Newsweek piece, "My Parent's Failed Experiment with Gender Neutrality." Failed? Not so sure. At least her parents resisted the compulsion to crowd out her childhood with one preassigned color. There may be huge intangible benefits to that.