Magenta, blush, rouge — colours that today leave us tickled pink, yet their past is surprisingly complex. What is the story behind all the pink connotations? Tracing down memory lane reveals how culture, marketing, and psychology painted one colour with so many shades.
Think of the color pink. Chances are, Barbie just strutted into your mind. Or maybe your grandma’s porcelain teacups. Or maybe The Plastics from Mean Girls. Whatever you thought of, I’m betting it was girly.
But here’s the twist: it wasn’t always that way. If you rewind a few centuries, pink was actually considered a boy’s color. Why? Because red was the color of kings and power, blood, courage, authority. Pink, being a paler shade of red, was seen as a training ground for boys, something like “baby steps into manhood.” Dressing little boys in pink made perfect sense: they weren’t grown men yet, but they were on their way.
So when did pink swap teams?
The real flip came after World War II. In the late 1940s: men returning from the front wore darker shades. Dark, muted colors became shorthand for masculinity, discipline, and sacrifice. Women, on the other hand, had been running factories during the war, but once men came back they were needed in homes again. Mamie Eisenhower, the First Lady of the 1950s, pushed this agenda forward alongside her favorite color – pink. She wore it, she decorated with it, and suddenly, the shade gained popularity across American advertising.
And it stuck to this day. By the 1990s, pink had started to shed its strictly feminine label — reappearing in unisex fashion, reclaimed by punk culture, and reimagined in the first experiments with gender-neutral marketing. But in the mainstream, it’s still heavily coded as feminine. For example, we can still see it in the so-called “pink tax,” the extra cost women often pay for products marketed towards them compared to nearly identical ones for men. It’s not the pinkness of the products that drives the higher price, but the association of pink with women — especially in hygiene and self-care items like razors, deodorants, or shampoos. Because these products are considered necessities, retailers know that women are more likely to buy them regardless of cost, which allows brands to charge more. However, economists note that while this pattern is widespread, it’s not universally true for every category.
But here’s the question: do girls actually like pink naturally?
This is where science jumps in. Psychologists Vanessa LoBue and Judy S. DeLoache ran a study called Pretty in Pink: The Early Development of Gender-Stereotyped Color Preferences. They tested babies, toddlers, and preschoolers to see if girls are born loving pink.
In the first year, infants showed no preference for pink over other colors. But as soon as children started to learn about their own gender — usually around age two or three — their preferences changed. Girls, surrounded by magenta, fuchsia and coral, began choosing pink more often. Boys, on the other hand, actively avoided it, almost as if rejecting pink was expected from them. By preschool, the divide was dramatic: pink became “the girls’ color,” and boys wanted nothing to do with it.
In other words: Defining pink as a color for girls is one of the best marketing stunts pulled in history that lasts to this day. And once you know that, the color takes on a whole new meaning. So next time it’s pink versus blue, go rogue and choose yellow.
I’m a BIG student from Warsaw, Poland — the real-life Carrie Bradshaw (if she swapped New York for Milan and stilettos for climbing shoes). Passionate about bridge, cooking, history and talking about movies like it’s a full-time job.
