Babies: Color and Gender

To analyze color only by it's relation to it's surroundings is a difficult task, for as humans, we tend to want a steady answer, an ultimate truth. Color is not constant, it's character changes according to many factors. Albers main point in his book Interaction of Color is that color is subjective. Albers analyzes this fact in a very scientific manner, focusing on the interactions of color based on amount, tone, shade, tint, juxtaposition, and even the physical ability of the eye. I think that color is definitely subjective in this manner, but also in the sense of how and where you were brought up. There are too many societal and cultural implications of color, and too many personal responses based on life experiences, for emotional and environmental subjectivity to be left out of the equation. For example, while it is changing in our society, pink is indicative of a girl, and blue of a boy. This may be different in other cultures. That we see red as the hottest color must be cultural as well, because typically the hottest part of a flame is blue. So when I analyze a design and how color can transform it completely, I cannot separate the subjectivity of my life experiences. A really great example of color's subjectivity is baby products. Infants generally have little hair and they lack a lot of gender indicators. A parent will announce the baby's sex by dressing the baby in a manner that will let everyone know, "He's a baseball boy," or "She's a princess." Color is a very important indicator. Lavender, pink, hot pink, purple: these colors all say little girl. Dark blue, dark green, baby blue, orange: these colors all say boy. Obviously, if a child is wearing a dark blue dress, she is most likely a girl, so I will look only at one piece pajamas, and how their color can make a person decide on the gender of a child.

Image from Mom's Favorite Stuff posted by JODIhttp://www.momsfavoritestuff.com/2008/08/20/velcro-baby-pajamas-for-easier-nights/

Choose a gender for each child. Why did you choose that gender? What if they were wearing something else?
We naturally decide that the one in pink is a girl, but if I dressed my 7 month old son in pink, I am sure that people would assume he is a girl as well. The girl in yellow could easily be a boy, but she has a bow in her hair. We look for all of these cues to make a judgment, and color is a cue.
There are also gender neutral colors. Usually sage green, white, yellow, and red are gender neutral. All of these colors can be applied to a form of clothing that is indicative of sex and that would change the rules, but in it's most basic form of clothing, color identifies sex (at least in infants).