Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
Last week I spotted the ad pictured at right on the J.Crew website. The text beneath the photo, which reads "Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is way more fun in neon," struck me as odd. I certainly wouldn't encourage effeminate tendencies in my own sons, but who am I to criticize a complete stranger's parenting decisions?
What I find most surprising is the controversy that has sprouted out of what I sized up to be a harmless, albeit odd advertisement. Fox News has gathered incensed responses from around the web:
“This is a dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity,” psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow wrote in a FoxNews.com Health column about the ad.
Media Research Center’s Erin Brown agreed, calling the ad “blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children.”
“Not only is Beckett likely to change his favorite color as early as tomorrow, Jenna's indulgence (or encouragement) could make life hard for the boy in the future,” Brown wrote in an opinion piece Friday. "J.CREW, known for its tasteful and modest clothing, apparently does not mind exploiting Beckett behind the facade of liberal, transgendered identity politics.”
Not being a parent myself, I appeal to those of you with young sons. Aren't critics overreacting here? Or is there something legitimately alarming and off-putting about this ad?
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Comments :
May '10
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
Actually, before the Depression, pink was for boys and pale blue was for girls. Red has always been considered the most masculine of colors (I guess since it is the color of blood) and pink was seen as the diminutive of that.
Blue for boys is a post war thing.
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
The color doesn't bother me, but I'm not sure why she is painting his toenails.
There's nothing wrong if a man is legitimately effeminate. It doesn't mean he's gay or transgendered. He could just be European.
I don't like seeing a gay man acting effeminate when he's just acting.
If someone is gay, that's fine...so long as he acts like a man.
Edited on Apr 12, 2011 at 6:50pmDec '10
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
Sure real men can wear pink, even paint their nails....they just have to really want it. Just ask Prince.
Jun '10
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
My three-year old granddaughter looked at the picture. Her response: "A boy shouldn't be putting on polish." She also says pink is a girl color. I'll go with her on this one.
Dec '10
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
It's blackmail pure and simple. She'll tell his future wife how he let her paint his toenails pink and he'll never live it down.
Nov '10
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
Brown and Ablow sound like they have gender insecurities of their own they ought to address.
As for kids decorating themselves - from a parent's POV, it's better they paint themselves, rather than the floors and walls, (or giving the cat a reverse mohawk, as mine did once). At least you can stick the kid in the bath.
Feb '11
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
There was a trend a few years back {albeit short lived} where guys wore pink as sort of a sign of their masculinity. I remember my wife saying Real Men Wear Pink to me as a sort of joke. Let's face it, boys will be boys and wearing pink isn't going to help any male gain acceptance amongst his peers, especially at a young age. As for the nail polish : Ain't no way in Hell.
Jul '10
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
Diane, one of my dearest friends (a moderate lefty) and her husband (a mindless, metrosexual lefty) once gave their 5-year-old son a pink tea set. They felt it was wise to head off any undue maleness as early as possible....
Edited on Apr 12, 2011 at 7:15pmNov '10
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
Finster - "gaining acceptance amongst his peers" shouldn't be part of a guy's vocabulary (unless he's talking about someone he doesn't like).
May '10
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
What we have here is an ad copywriter who is a product of our culturally marxist universities. Girl power agitprop - boys are simply defective girls, so effeminate boys will be adulated before us ad nauseum.
When that little bugger comes home with a few black eyes and bloody noses after his schoolyard chums see his pretty pink nails, his tastes will change. And properly so.
Feb '11
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
Sorry, I was referring to young toddlers with fragile emotions.
Dec '10
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
The boy's preference for pink isn't here or there. But his mother's insistence on painting his toenails is somewhat bizarre. Forcing a small child to engage in gender-inappropriate behaviors can lead to some odd repercussions later in his life.
May '10
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
I'm content for the most part as long as a mother teaches her son to be assertive. Effeminate men tend to aggravate me. The flamboyant ones behave the way they do very often just to agitate others and flout traditional gender roles.
Edited on Apr 12, 2011 at 7:32pmFeb '11
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
I have no problem with pink, I just don't think it looks good on me.
As far as the painted toenails, I get the feeling that when my daughter is old enough to be interested in such things, that she would find painting daddy's toenails fun. No big deal; I always wear socks anyway.
May '10
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
It's hard to tell how old the boy is in the picture, but he seems a bit too old to be in the gender neutral phase that many toddlers have. When my boys were little they wanted me to paint their nails. Around four my oldest son didn't want anything to do with nail polish anymore...it was for girls. The younger brother followed suit. I haven't thought about it since then and at ten my oldest son is too busy being fascinated by cleavage to remember what he did at four. What bothers me about this ad is that those experiences are private and should be a blip with no more importance than any of the other blips in the history of the child. Making it a focal point is a mistake and adds a forced element to what should otherwise be a spontaneous and natural whim of a child. Also, neither of my sons would ever forgive me if I put them in an ad like that.
May '10
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
Kervinlee: What we have here is an ad copywriter who is a product of our culturally marxist universities. Girl power agitprop - boys are simply defective girls, so effeminate boys will be adulated before us ad nauseum.
When that little bugger comes home with a few black eyes and bloody noses after his schoolyard chums see his pretty pink nails, his tastes will change. And properly so. · Apr 12 at 7:19pm
Exactly. That's the biggest reason I don't like the ad. The agenda behind it is part of a crusade to change natural gender behaviors.
Aug '10
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
One must remember to judge these things the same way one should have judged the famous Murphy Brown/Dan Quayle controversy almost twenty years ago: Murphy Brown wasn't a real person, so the issue wasn't what "she" should have done on discovering "she" was pregnant, but what the scriptwriters were thinking when they invented that plot line. I rather doubt this ad shows a real mother and son, but rather two strangers picked from a modeling web site by an ad agency--and I also doubt the kid likes pink or wants to paint is nails. So this is purely about the intentions or attitudes of the people who created the ad, and of the people at J. Crew who gave it the okay.
This feels like a milder version of every other Abercrombie and Fitch advertisement, with their oozing contempt for heterosexuality. The contempt here is less for heterosexuality than for the idea that a culture should have any conception of gender roles. Unless they're all gay, and thus begin with a problem with traditional gender roles, it amazes me that they could look at this and think this is cool. But there it is.
Feb '11
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
My first and last shirt with pink in it was actually a pink and gray shirt I had in 8th grade. As I recall, I saw Buddy Holly wearing one and thought if it was good enough for him maybe I could use it to score with the girls at the monthly school dance. It didn't do much for my dancing ability, but it didn't hurt my social life either.
Aug '10
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
I enjoy listening to storytellers and one source for that is The Moth (a reference to the moths drawn to the porchlight when folks gather there to swap stories).
Here is a very funny one told by a man whose little boy wants a pink bicycle for his third birthday.
It's the second one from the bottom, only seven minutes long.
Edited on Apr 12, 2011 at 8:11pmJun '10
Re: Why Can't Boys Like the Color Pink?
His peers may not be quite as open-minded, or secure in their own "boyhood." And in that case, you (the Mother) are reliably identifying your child as bully-victim-number-one. That experience, of being bullied, can end one of two ways--character building, or confidence destroying. And if it's confidence destroying, it can end very very badly.