Are we going to buy everything in pink or blue? Should we get clothes with unicorns or dinosaurs? Once you get pregnant, everyone is talking about colors and patterns. But guess what, there are more colors than pink and blue, and many more cute animals despite unicorns and dinosaurs.
To know the gender of a baby is very important for some parents and there are many reasons for it. They can easily start buying all the essentials for their baby, and they can avoid an embarrassing situation such as dressing their baby girl in a blue onesie with cars. Of course, she wouldn't be embarrassed, but they would.
For decades, society is telling us what is suitable for women and men, and when it comes to babies it is not different. We should all follow a simple rule, girls have to wear a pink dress and play with dolls, and boys have to wear a blue shirt while playing with cars.
Luckily nowadays, more people are realizing that gender stereotypes don't have to be followed. Simply put, no baby girl will be emotionally hurt after wearing something blue, and no boy will be less manly when he grows up just because they dressed him in pink when he was a baby.
The gender-color symbolism seems to be so embedded in western societies that most of us don't even think about it.
Would you even believe that it used to be different about 100 years ago? Yes, I mean pink was for boys and blue for girls. It was a magazine for baby clothes manufacturers who in 1918 published that "There has been a great diversity of opinion on this subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy; while blue, which is more delicate and dainty is prettier for the girl."
At that time the gender-color related norm didn't stick for too long because researches didn't prove that certain gender inclines to a certain color. Unclear results proved only one thing - the gender-color scheme is a social construct created by the fashion industry.
Regarding marketing which didn't work, the same industry decided to make a big shift sometimes in the 1940s when it came up with a new idea - pink is for girls and blue is for boys. Even that novelty didn't become a social norm immediately. It lasted until the 1980s when today's strict color-gender norm set in at all. And it all started with mass marketing techniques. Some argue that the former color pairing (blue=girls, pink=boys) was dominated by the opposite due to French fashion influence. In France, the center of fashion of the 20th century, pink was traditionally feminine color and blue masculine. If you are interested more about the topic check out these two articles I used as a resource (Live Science and Today I Found Out).
It seems like debates about colors and gender will never stop, but we can all agree on the fact that color pairing is culturally and socially influenced. It depends just on us if we want to follow it or not, and it also depends on the society or the culture you are living in.
Let's get back to pregnancy and gender. Amazingly, we live in an era of highly developed technology and your doctor can find out the gender of your baby even before you start showing. It gives us endless opportunities to get everything ready for a new family member to come. I respect everyone's decision when it comes to finding out the gender of their baby. And I wish people respect the opposite decision as well.
Knowing if your little one is a girl or a boy before they enter this world, became almost a standard. A standard of the modern and developed world.
Many people asked us, shortly after we announced that we're expecting a baby whether it was a boy or a girl and we always said: "We don't know and we don't want to know."
It's great when people understand that we want to find out the moment the baby is born. It's great when people say that we're strong because they wouldn't be able to wait.
But what is not that great is when people try to guess or predict the gender of our baby throwing old wives' tales on us. The look of the pregnant woman, the shape of her belly, the things she wants to eat. All those should be the predictions of whether you carry a boy or a girl.
Don't worry, we know them all, but honestly, we don't believe in them. And more importantly, we decided not to know so let's be patient together and wait for the surprise.
Moreover, many pregnant women glowed while carrying a baby girl and many pregnant women craved sweets while carrying a baby boy. My point is that we are all different, our bodies are different, our baby bumps and even our babies inside the wombs are different.
For me, myths will stay myths. I would rather believe in my intuition. Since I got pregnant I have a strong feeling which is telling me who is in my belly. And I will not tell you yet... or maybe never. :)
Now let's discuss why we don't want to know the gender. The answer is very simple; we want to experience that magical moment when the baby comes and one of us screams "It's a boy/girl!".
We also agreed that the colors are not that important, at least for a little baby who doesn't have any color preference yet. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I would never dress a girl in pink. I just don't see a point in knowing the gender in advance just to buy everything in a color which pairs with that gender. Nowadays we have so many options for baby apparel and we can purchase many cute clothes no matter the gender or color.
And after all, our boy can wear pink and our girl can wear blue... because love sees no color. <3
Comments