The boy-child; healthy, happy and rocking the pink onesie. Image; Su Leslie 1998
Don’t you love looking at old photos of your kids?
I remember taking this shot, and more particularly remember my mother’s reaction to me dressing her grandson in pink (and lavender, lime green, red …)
That was over 20 years ago, and I had thought such outdated notions of gender-based clothing (not to mention toys, games, behaviors, etc) was steadily being consigned to the dustbin of history. Then last week I had a conversation with my sister in law about how her mother complains that my four year old niece is always dressed “like a boy” — in blue!
Sigh.
Posted to the Ragtag Daily Prompt | pink
Zimmerbitch 
Those days of gender-based colour schemes are fortunately over, but we still have a long way to go, Su!
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That’s true. Sometimes I wonder if we’re going backwards.
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Let’s hope NOT!
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What a sweetheart!
Leslie
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He was — still is mostly. But not around to hug as much these days.
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That’ll come again much later…
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How quickly time flies and gender based color still persists! Heck Garfield is to me a tom cat as Jim Davis drew him but there are some who feel he is a ‘she’! Even my inanimate furball is facing it. I, Garfield Hug am feme as I hug Garfields haha! Your son is so cute but now is a handsome lad👍😃
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*typo female. Sorry😊
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I used to dress my only girl in blue and all my boys had dolls! Not sure it made any difference whatsoever 🙂
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😀 The thing I noticed when the boy was little, is that boys seemed to me e more “gendered” than girls. Perhaps it’s because they had the best, most fun touts and the girls wanted to play with them. But while the little girls at Playcentre would try anything, the boys monopolised the sandpit and big outdoor toys and generally avoided the craft stuff. In that environment, I don’t think it was parental influence — we had a strong gender-neutral philosophy — but it seemed to happen “naturally.”
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Pink used to be a colour for all. And should be again. What a cute photo.
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Thanks. I’ve always thought we should wear colours that suit us. Have to say, the boy-child does seem to subscribe to the same view and has some wonderfully eccentric clothes.
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🙂
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Ha, history repeating itself…. I was of the daring kind, wild colours and materials.
My son, now 41, wears dark blue, dark grey and black….. Was it his shocking mother? We will never know. 😉
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😀 my son at 21 has quite eccentric taste in clothes. He has a thing for quite kitsch sweaters.
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never mind – I vastly prefer THAT to somebody with no sense of humour. My son luckily has plenty of the second but he seemingly goes for muted colours in his sartorial choices….
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And very cute he looks in it too! I think the gender based colour thing is going backwards again with all the pink princesses, pink plastic toys for girls etc. And pink was originally the “masculine” colour anyway.
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😀 I think you are right; the sheer volume of stuff targeted at particularly little girls is appalling.
I remember reading that pink was considered masculine; can’t remember when it shifted though.
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Surprisingly recently I think, less than 100 years ago.
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Such a cutie! They really do grow up too quickly! Thank goodness for photographs!
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Absolutely!! People always say it, but it really DOES seem like yesterday when WP he was that small.
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What a cute baby.. look at those HUGE beautiful eyes! Pink, blue, yellow, it shouldn’t matter at all. You son DID rock pink!
My son commandeered his big sisters toy pram and one of her only dolls was inside. Ok, I thought, he’s going to play dolls. Nope… the pram was turned into a drag racing machine and the doll got flung out at the first tight corner turn. All that interested him about the pram was that it had wheels.
Nurture certainly didn’t define him in any way but Nature seems to have stuck to the stereotype. Oh well, we at least tried.
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I noticed that too when the boy-child was little. We scrupulously avoided giving him the obvious “boy” toys, but he had a similar obsession with wheels and racing. Not guns though — for which I was grateful.
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Adorable smile! Think pink!
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So cute!
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Oh my goodness, that photo is gorgeous! I recently watched some video footage of my kids and I couldn’t get over how damn cute my middle one was at 3. And then I felt sad that I didn’t appreciate it enough at the time because I was just trying to survive.
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One tiny step (or is that baby? :-)) at a time is how change happens, I guess.
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Such a lovely photo! I went through some old photos a few months ago which always makes me a bit nostalgic.
It’s odd that gender colouring should still be thing today… My granny was shocked when my mum let me wear black t-shirts and such. 😄
Did you know that little boys were usually dressed in pink before WWI? That’s because it was seen as the little sister of red which of course is a colour regarded to power and wealth. Girls got to wear baby blue. This however changed after the war.
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I knew that pink was considered a boy’s colour, but didn’t know when it changed. There is so much in history that, if people knew, it might make them realise their entrenched beliefs are really just a passing thing.
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Just like most of us – a passing thing. So very few can leave a durable impression on this earth, but maybe that’s for the better.
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😀 in some cases, the traces can’t disappear quickly enough!!
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Too true!
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