>> there's some chance the "pink vs. blue" convention has a biological basis
That makes no sense to me. I'm Greek and in my neck of the woods boys and girls are not expected to wear specific colours, at least not when I was growing up.
If you do a search for Greek traditional dress you'll notice that the colours that dominate are white, black, red and some shade of brown, but they are both pretty much equally distributed between men and women.
That's empirical and maybe someone somewhere has a proper data'd study that contradicts me but you really won't find anyone who can point to examples of pink dominating women's traditional dress in Greece.
I believe the same goes for other cultures. Every time I see the traditional ornamentation of people from the Amazon, or sub-Saharan Africa for instance, vivid bright colours seem to dominate for both sexes. If I think of South-East Asian traditional dress, I get an impression of oranges, yellows, and reds for the women (who do tend to wear the most colourful stuff).
And there's nowhere a shade of pink to be found.
So I think this blue vs pink thing is definitely a cultural phenomenon and that it's really just affecting specific parts of the world.
> If I think of South-East Asian traditional dress, I get an impression of oranges, yellows, and reds for the women (who do tend to wear the most colourful stuff).
Thanks for that info, I wasn't aware of those traditions. Indeed yellow to red is the range of hues that some human females might be able to discriminate better than males. That is, the idea is females see these colors more distinctly or are more visually "sensitive" to these colors.
"Pink" is relevant because it's merely red "diluted" with white, that is, lower saturation of a red hue.
No doubt cultural influences are enormously important re: attributing colors as symbols of gender identity. I was only writing about the possible genetic/biological factors contributing to selecting which colors are assigned to males vs. females, and such factors could certainly be quite secondary.
OTOH the info you contributed is intriguing because it appears to support the hypothesis I was referring to.
>> Indeed yellow to red is the range of hues that some human females might be able to discriminate better than males.
That's interesting indeed, because I was wrong about the male/female dichotomy in Indian traditional dress: yellows and reds (and also fuschias, turquoises and so on) are worn equally by males and females. Blues and purples are also very commonly worn by women. The difference is in the patterns and the shape of the dress, but not in the colours. Apologies for that- like I said I'm Greek, not Indian.
Additionally, the other cultures I mention have an equal spread of reds, yellows, and what have you among men and women, so again I don't see how any genetic thing is at play here.
Finally- All this doesn't say anything about why pink is "girly" only in specific parts of the world. If pink in particular was a genetic thing then it would be all over the place, not just in a few countries.
That makes no sense to me. I'm Greek and in my neck of the woods boys and girls are not expected to wear specific colours, at least not when I was growing up.
If you do a search for Greek traditional dress you'll notice that the colours that dominate are white, black, red and some shade of brown, but they are both pretty much equally distributed between men and women.
That's empirical and maybe someone somewhere has a proper data'd study that contradicts me but you really won't find anyone who can point to examples of pink dominating women's traditional dress in Greece.
I believe the same goes for other cultures. Every time I see the traditional ornamentation of people from the Amazon, or sub-Saharan Africa for instance, vivid bright colours seem to dominate for both sexes. If I think of South-East Asian traditional dress, I get an impression of oranges, yellows, and reds for the women (who do tend to wear the most colourful stuff).
And there's nowhere a shade of pink to be found.
So I think this blue vs pink thing is definitely a cultural phenomenon and that it's really just affecting specific parts of the world.