Skip to main content

Pink for boys

 


Remember the Pink Chaddi campaign that rocked India in 2009? Hundreds of pink panties were couriered to Pramod Muthalik’s office by Indian women as a mark of protest against his organisation’s [Sri Ram Sena] offensive actions upon young couples found together on Valentine’s Day. The colour pink was chosen because that colour was considered to be conspicuously feminine. The campaign was a revolutionary assertion of autonomy by India’s women.

Now look at this quote from a trade publication called Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department, published in 1918: The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys and blue for the girls. 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.”

Pink for boys and blue for girls. That was a century back. Today it’s just the opposite. Who makes such conventions? The society, of course. And randomly too. There is no rationale behind why boys should wear pink and girls blue or vice-versa. Gender is a similar whimsical social construct. The society constructs the gender conventions. In other words, the society decides what boys and girls should or can do.

But the time has changed. “Why should boys have all the fun?” Girls are asking that question not only in commercial ads today.

Many social conventions are made by a group of people who wish to have power over others. The ancient caste system with very clear rules about the roles that people can and should play was a creation of a group of shrewd Brahmins who knew how to wield power over the others effectively. Who made the conventions of the Sati, devadasis, restrictions on women, and so on? The same power-mongers and power-brokers, who else?

The times have changed though many top men in India seem to be unaware of that and hence cling to ancient systems like barnacles clinging to rocks till death. These men may seem to be currently very powerful and even effective but will end up eventually looking like bizarre gargoyles on the edifices of history. The world has travelled far ahead from centuries-old sanctimonious conventions and rituals. Gender roles have also undergone revolutionary changes.

Women have proved that they are no less than men in any way, anywhere. Women have conquered the peaks that men considered their sole prerogatives earlier. Women have embraced careers that were once exclusively male romances. In fact, women are outshining men in many areas. Pink is indeed turning out to be a “more decided and stronger” colour. Maybe, today’s boys who are increasingly looking effeminate need to arrogate to themselves the pink colour.

PS. This post is part of Blogchatter’s CauseAChatter.

 

Comments

  1. It had been quite a revelation when I first read the words - gender is a social construct. But once we understand that we also understand that these constructs can be broken. We should all just wear pink!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Interestingly most people want more gender equality, more personal freedom. Yet as a nation we seem to be regressing to some old straitjackets because of some of our worthless leaders.

      Delete
  2. It's true gender roles have undergone changes over the years. Knowledge amongst people is increasing and people are making choices based on what they want rather than what society tells them

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That freedom is very essential. Unfortunately today in India certain political powers are trying to curtail that freedom.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple Dharmasthala:  The Shadows Behind the Sanctum Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This ma...

Two Nuns and two questions

The nuns kept in custody  Two Catholic nuns were arrested on 25 July 2025 at Durg railway station for allegedly trafficking tribal women from Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh to Agra in UP. Today’s newspapers in Kerala have expressed their contempt of the act more vehemently than I had expected. It seems secularism has hope yet in this country. For those who are not aware of the incident, two nuns were arrested because some criminals of a depraved organisation called Bajrang Dal in Chhattisgarh chose to conclude that the nuns were committing the crime of human-trafficking. Since that charge wouldn’t stick, because the women confessed that they were going voluntarily to take up jobs with the help of the nuns in order to raise their families from miserable poverty in a country that claims to be a $5-tillion-economy, another charge was fabricated that the nuns had indulged in religious conversion. Now let us look at certain facts. Though I keep questioning the Christian churches for...

Capital Punishment is not Revenge

Govindachamy when Kerala High Court confirmed his death sentence The Bible suggests that it is better for one man to die if that death helps others to live better [ John 11: 50 ]. Forgive me for applying that to a criminal today, though Jesus made that statement in a benign theological context. A notorious and hardcore criminal has escaped prison in Kerala. Fourteen years ago he assaulted a young girl who was travelling all alone in a late evening train, going back home from her workplace. The girl jumped out of the running train to save herself from this beast. But he jumped after her and raped her. The postmortem report suggested that he raped her twice, the second being when she had already fallen unconscious. And then he killed her hitting her head with a stone. Do you think that creature is human? I wrote about this back then: A Drop of Tear For You, Soumya . The people of Kerala demanded capital punishment for this creature, the brute called Govindachamy. He is inhu...

Gods, Guns and Missionaries

Book Review Title: Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity Author: Manu S Pillai Publisher: Penguin Random House India, 2024 Pages: 564 (about half of which consists of Notes) There never was any monolithic religion called Hinduism. Different parts of India practised Hinduism in its own ways, with its own gods and rituals and festivals. Some of these were even mutually opposed. For example, Vamana who is a revered incarnation of Vishnu in North India becomes a villain in Kerala’s Onam legends. What has become of this protean religion of infinite variety and diversity today in the hands of its ‘missionary’ political leaders? Manu S Pillai’s book ends with V D Savarkar’s contributions to the religion with a subtle hint that it is his legacy that is driving the present version of the religion in the name of Hindutva. The last lines of the book, leaving aside the Epilogue titled ‘What is Hinduism?’, are telltale. “Life did not give Savarkar all he...