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Before the nappy pin, stretchy elastic, Velcro and fantastic plastic, all the little boys and girls were dressed in white dresses and cloth nappies because it was practical, and white was easy to bleach to get all those nasty stains out of the clothes.

 

In the early 1900s when pastel colours became fashionable for babies, large-scale American department stores claimed that the generally accepted rule is “pink for the boys” because pink is a stronger and more decided colour, whereas blue, which is delicate and dainty, “is prettier for the girl”.

 

An about-turn happened in the 1940s when boys and girls were dressed like miniature men and women. The powerful marketing departments of the leading retail stores confidently declared “pink for girls and blue for boys”. They then proceeded to flood the market with pink and blue gender-specific items.  So effective, persuasive, and all-pervasive was this idea, that the Western world still buys into it, as if it’s one of the unwritten rules of the universe! So ingrained in us is the conviction that “pink is for girls” and “blue is for boys”, that we seldom ask just why this is so.

 

We're all guilty of sometimes accepting the world as it is because "it's always been done that way", but when we start asking questions, we might get some real surprises! I mean, have you ever wondered why Christmas colours are red and green? Well, we can thank the Coca cola Company for that one!  Oh, and another little item that people still cling to and that just doesn’t want to disappear from the fashion landscape is the necktie, an uncomfortable strip of fabric that no-one seems to be able to knot, and that serves no practical purpose that I can think of. "Off with the tie!", I say. But that's another topic for another day.

 

In the meantime, let’s stay curious about this curious, wonderful world we inhabit.