Besides poop, drool and crying, what else do you associate with babies? The colors blue and pink, of course. But did you ever wonder how it was decided that blue went with the boys and pink went with the girls? And who was it that forgot to tell Richard Simmons?
Like so many of our modern-day customs, this one stems from a whacked-out theory on demons. According to historians, back in ancient times it was believed that evil spirits (who apparently had very busy schedules back then) lingered over nurseries. It was also believed that certain colors possessed the capability to combat evil. Blue was considered the most powerful color because of its association with the sky and, thus, heavenly spirits. Since boys were then considered the most valuable natural resource to parents, blue clothing was a cheap form of insurance.
Evil spirits apparently couldn’t be bothered with menacing baby girls. Not only were girls not dressed in blue, they really had no specific color to call their own until centuries later. Our association of pink with girls stems from European legend, which professed that baby girls were born inside pink roses. Another European legend also holds that baby boys are born in blue cabbage patches — a legend that spawned those disturbing looking dolls in the early 80s as well as the truly demonic behavior of some parents to get their hands on them. *
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This article appears in Jun 12-18, 2002.
